They are hanging around outside the pool hall when Eddie Reston and another boy they don’t know drive up in a cherry-red Camaro. The street is mostly deserted, usual for this end of Main Street on Saturday night when most of the cars are parked farther down the street in front of the hotel. It’s warm for the end of September; every car cruising down Main has the windows cranked wide, tunes blaring from eight-track stereos, the laughter of teenagers — recently back at school but free once again for the weekend — riding on waves of moist end-of-summer air.
“Hey, girls. Wanna go for a ride?” Eddie is in the driver’s seat, his arm dangling loosely out the window, drumming his fingers on the door to Led Zeppelin. He’s wearing sunglasses, big as half his face, even though the sun’s ready to disappear over the brow of the horizon. “Hop in the back,” he says around the cigarette hanging off his lip as he guns the engine.
“Like we’d go anywhere with you,” Becca says, flipping her hair and looking away down Main as though she’s waiting for someone better to pull up.
“C’mon. Don’t be like that,” he says. Eddie is in grade twelve like they are, an awkward boy with few friends and an unfortunate tic, a sporadic jerking of his head, which has earned him the nickname Pecker.
Becca leans in, propping her elbows on the door. “Pretty nice,” she says, turning on the charm and smiling at the new boy. “Who’s your friend?” she says to Eddie.
He folds himself out of the passenger seat, a tall, stocky guy with dirty blond hair curling past his shoulders. He is Eddie’s cousin, Steve, from the city, and they learn the car doesn’t really belong to him; it’s his older brother’s.
“Whaddya say?” Eddie says as Steve folds down the front seat so the girls can crawl in the back.
“Well?” Becca asks, turning to Sarah and Addie. “You want to go?”
Sarah doesn’t think they should; her dad’s warned her about climbing into the back seat of cars with strange boys. “We don’t even know his cousin,” Sarah says quietly enough so the boys don’t hear. “You really want to ride with Pecker?”
“Oh, lighten up. It’ll be fun,” Becca says.
Addie walks around to the passenger side where Steve is standing. “Where are we going exactly?”
“Just cruise out of town a couple miles. Show you what this thing can do.”
“Sure. Why not?” Becca says and hops in, her golden hair bouncing.
There’s a two-four of Canadian on the back seat and Becca shoves it over when Addie climbs in. “What’re we supposed to do with this?”
“Drink it, what else?” Eddie says and revs the engine again.
“There’s no room for me,” Sarah says, looking in. “That’s really okay, I’ll just walk home.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Becca says, rolling her eyes. “Shove over, Addie, and give me that beer.” She takes out a bottle and turns the box on its side, jamming it in front of her legs on the floor. “Got an opener?”
Steve reaches back for the beer and cracks the cap off with his teeth. “You comin’ or not?” he says, and Sarah reluctantly crawls in.
They make a few laps around town, stopping long enough to talk to Bobby Boychuk, who’s cruising in his beat-up old farm truck with the rear bumper hanging off. He tells them there’s a roadside party north of town on Boot Hill Road, so Eddie floors it in front of the post office, squealing the tires, as Steve hoots and bangs his outstretched hand on the roof. Becca and Addie squeal as they head out of town.
Sarah braces her legs and hangs on, wondering how she got railroaded into this, trapped in the back seat with a dipshit she doesn’t even like at the wheel, off to a party she doesn’t want to go to in the middle of nowhere at the side of a deserted road.
“Want a sip?” Addie asks, holding out the beer. Sarah shakes her head so Addie downs another gulp and hands it back to Becca. Addie’s going along, Sarah sees, forcing down the beer because Becca wants her to. Addie was hurt when Sarah first started hanging around with Becca, until Sarah made it clear that she wasn’t being replaced. It hadn’t taken long for Becca to take control of the trio, however. She made all the decisions about where to go and what to do, and Sarah and Addie found themselves following along.
“So you got a boyfriend?” Steve asks, looking over his shoulder, asking no one in particular but both Sarah and Addie know he means Becca. Every boy loses some level of control around her. It’s her hair, Addie always says, and Sarah thinks that’s part of it, but there’s something more. It’s like Becca is friends with the sun and uses it to her advantage, tilting her head so it catches in her hair, weaving flaxen threads through it, turning her into some kind of golden girl. That radiant sunshine seems to seep into her pores, fill her up, and she knows just when to use it. She can manipulate anyone, picking the exact right time to laugh at Mr. Strump’s pathetic jokes in math class and keeping Cady Hubley in check with nothing more than a strategic lift of an eyebrow.
Becca doesn’t answer him. She’s staring out the window at the trees whizzing by.
“Okay, girls, ready for a real ride?” Steve taps a drum roll on the dashboard with the palms of his hands. Eddie grins and guns it. The Camaro lurches forward and the girls’ heads snap back. Addie’s front teeth connect with the lip of the bottle with a distinct clink and a splash of beer sloshes onto her lap.
“Holy shit, you made me chip my tooth!”
The car jets forward, a satisfied hum coming from under the hood, then Eddie shifts it to high.
“Whoa! This baby can go!” Becca’s enjoying this, a look like rapture spread across her face.
Faster and faster they go until Sarah feels the tires shimmy against the blacktop and the car fishtails a bit. A tragic accident last year suddenly comes to mind — five kids killed near Locklin — and the photo she saw in the newspaper, that one girl’s shoe, lying on the highway. The fields and trees are nothing more than blurs of orange and yellow, blending together now out of the corner of her eye. They hit a dip in the road and go airborne, sailing up then slamming back to the pavement as the car rocks on its wheels.
“Slow down!” Sarah shouts, patting and poking her hands into the crevices of the seat around her, searching for a seat belt tucked away. It’s time to put it on. Just then there’s a terrible screeching and she pitches forward, smacking her forehead on the back of Steve’s seat, and the car skids sideways, tires squealing. Becca screams.
When they finally come to a stop, the smell of burnt rubber hangs in the air. “Fuck, man,” Steve says and Eddie just sits there and stares, hanging on to the wheel. A grain truck sits at the edge of the highway, its front end angled into the ditch, and a young guy is walking toward them, waving his arms.
“He’s pissed off, man,” Steve says and they all crawl out of the car.
There’s something familiar about him although Sarah isn’t sure who he is. He’s not much older than they are, but she notices the way his eyes take everything in, looking things over, seeing them all for what they really are, a bunch of crazy kids with a case of beer and nothing to do on a Saturday night except try to get someone killed.
He is glaring at Steve and Eddie, his chin jutting out. It’s a rugged chin that matches his strong cheekbones and the confident line of his jaw. Sarah doesn’t want to stare but she can’t help herself. His face is perfect.
“You’re damn lucky I swerved over or they’d be picking pieces of you up off the road. You think that tin can is any match for my grain truck?”
“You were going too slow, man,” Eddie mumbles. “And I didn’t see that other car coming.”
“You’re fuckin’ lucky I didn’t roll.” He takes a step forward, lifts a fist like he’s going to lace Eddie between the eyes but then he stops himself, clasping the knuckles of his clenched fist with the other and looks away. “You girls okay?” His face softens as he looks at Sarah with real concern and she feels something reach up and grab hold inside then roll and pitch in her stomach. She feels almost sick, but in a good and glorious way.
“Scared shitless, but we’ll live,” Becca says, stepping out from behind Steve. She gathers her hair with one fist and drapes it over a bare shoulder. “Heard you were back from college but I haven’t seen you around.”
“Hey, Rebecca.” He seems caught off-guard, as though he’s surprised to see her. “Been busy with harvest, same as everyone else.”
“Heard you’re back to stay and farm with your dad,” she says, smiling sunshine at him. “We’re going to a party. You wanna come?”
He shakes his head. “No, gotta get back with the truck.” He takes a sidelong look at Sarah again, as though he, too, might know who she is. “Make sure you idiots take it easy,” he says with a frown to Eddie and Steve, then he climbs back into his truck, backs onto the road, and pulls away.
After the close call, they ditch their plan to go to the roadside. Sarah and Addie want to go back to town, although Sarah knows she can’t go straight home — her dad will kill her if he sees her drive up in that fancy red car — so they drop her off at the pool hall. She takes the long way home, walking briskly along Park Street, swinging her arms, breathing hard, working out her duelling emotions — the bright fear she felt in the car and the warm flush that washed over her when the guy in the truck first looked at her. She slows down when she nears the luxurious brick houses with two-door garages and backyards overlooking the valley, the ones with the perfect families living inside. She imagines mothers and fathers behind the walls, playing canasta at dining-room tables while children sleep in comfy bunk beds or eat popcorn in front of flickering TVs. Maybe she’ll have a life like that someday with a husband who’ll adore her and beautiful children with fine-featured faces. If she closes her eyes tight and wishes really hard, she can almost believe it.
They’re in school on Monday morning, waiting for the first bell beside Addie’s locker, when Sarah finds out who he is. Cady Hubley is standing beside the biology lab with a crowd of girls around her. “It was so fun!” she is saying, telling them all about the Saturday night roadside, loud enough so Sarah and Becca and Addie will know what a great party they missed. Eddie is rummaging at the bottom of his locker across the hall. When he stands up, he looks over, trying to catch Becca’s eye, and she looks away as if she doesn’t know him.
“What a loser. We’re lucky he didn’t get us all killed,” says Sarah.
“Whose idea was it to go anywhere with that peckerhead?” Addie asks, digging out her algebra text from a tumbled pile. “If we would’ve slammed into the back of that grain truck, we’d all be toast.”
“The guy driving the grain truck, who was he anyway?” Sarah tries to keep the tremor out of her voice and act as if she’s just curious and not dying to know.
“Oh, him?” There’s a small mirror hanging on Addie’s swung-open door and Becca leans in, dabbing her lips with gloss. “He’s my neighbour, Jack. I rode with him on the bus for years.”
“I thought he was going to drift Eddie. He should have. One punch and he would’ve sent Pecker flying all the way back to town,” Addie says.
Becca pats the excess gloss from her finger onto her cheeks and blends it in with her fingertip, making her whole face shimmer. “He’s changed a lot since I last saw him. He used to be skinny but, wow, did you see those shoulders?”
“You mean Jack Bilyk? From the farm next to yours?” Sarah remembers something about him, something he once did and what Becca’s mother said afterward.
They were down by the river behind the Webbs’ farm. The water had dried up to a trickle that summer and they had taken their sandals off and were having a contest, jumping from stone to stone, trying to make it across without stepping into the shallow water. Some of the stones were slippery with green slime and once, Sarah almost went in. From the bank on the other side, they heard a low rumble, like a log being rolled, and then the sound of splintering twigs, as though some enormous creature might be ploughing through the underbrush and deadfall. Sarah stopped where she was, one foot raised in the air. A thunderous roar cut through the air; Becca screamed and leaped off her stone. She thrashed through the water back toward the bank. Sarah followed, stumbling over loose stones, splashing muddy water as high as her back.
When they were safely across they heard the sound of laughter. Two teenage boys emerged from the stand of poplars on the other side of the river, one as tall and scrawny as the other was short and round, chuckling and pointing at them.
“You assholes!” Becca shouted, reaching for a small rock and hurling it at them. It landed in the water with a feeble plop. “I’m gonna tell my dad!”
“You just go ahead and do that!” yelled the tall boy. “I’m not scared of your old man!”
When they got back to the house, Becca told her mother how Jack Bilyk and Shorty Cornforth had tried to scare them. “And I’m telling Dad just because he dared me not to,” she said indignantly.
Mrs. Webb nervously straightened the gathers in her apron, plucking at each little pleat. “They’re just teenage boys, having a little fun with you. There’s no need to stir your father up over such a harmless prank. You know how he can be when it comes to those Bilyks. He’s apt to storm over there and start something. You just stay away from Jack Bilyk.”
Afterward, Becca told Sarah there was a feud going on between her father and Jack’s, something from long ago regarding a dead dog. There was more to it than that, she said, but her mother wouldn’t talk about it and her father only swore under his breath whenever the Bilyk name came up.
Becca screws the lid onto her lip gloss and shoves it in the back pocket of her jeans. “Yep. He’s lived right next door all my life and I barely know him. He’s cute, though, don’t you think?”
The bell rings and the girls fall into step behind a moving throng of students. He’s more than cute, Sarah thinks, following along. He’s the most handsome boy in the world and she thinks she might be in love with him.
Sarah’s basket is nearly full — they’ve been at this for nearly two hours — skirting the woodlands, wandering trails, and even searching along the gravel road. Baba seems to know every tree, every blade of grass and wildflower, every wild rose growing on her land, and her first basket is already full, waiting to be picked up later along a path they’ll pass over on the way back to her house. She is stooped to her work, fingers thick as sausages, skillfully plucking red rosehips the size of fat peas from the tips of the prickly branches. One of her wool socks has slipped down and is pooled at her ankle while the other, secured with a red rubber ring, sits tight at her knee. She’s wearing a green flowered babushka with a nearly identical skirt and a bright yellow blouse, so the bears will be sure to see them, she jokes. Sarah’s always on the lookout, jumping at every cracking twig and rustle she hears in the bushes, but Baba just laughs. She isn’t scared of anything. The bears are after the berries, same as we are, she says. There are lots to go around.
“How you doing?” Baba comes over and looks in Sarah’s basket. “Good,” she says, and Sarah smiles; good rhymes with food when Baba says it. “You finish that basket, we go back after that.”
When they return to the house, they wash the rosehips and sort through them, throwing out the blemished ones and picking the brown sepals and stems off the others. The rosehips will dry on white tea towels spread on Baba’s kitchen table and she will gather them up later and store them in glass jars, where they’ll glow like precious rubies.
Baba settles in on her rocking chair beside the wood stove with a cup of tea when they’re done, sighing deeply and lifting one leg then the other with great effort onto a footstool. “You want something to eat?”
There are cinnamon buns, freshly baked this morning, sitting on the table, and Sarah tears one apart and devours a gooey bite.
Baba’s house has four rooms: a small closet off the kitchen large enough for a washstand and a galvanized tub that she drags into the kitchen each Saturday, a tiny bedroom and living room, and a large kitchen with two stoves. Above, there is a half-storey, where Sarah sleeps when she stays over. There’s an outhouse out back and a commode in the basement. She finally gave in and let Sarah’s father move an electric stove in about five years ago, but she insisted on keeping the wood stove in the corner. She still uses it to bake bread and brew her tinctures and teas. An unlit candle and an icon of the Holy Mother, draped with a cross-stitched cloth, sit on a small table next to her bedroom door. She lights the candle each night before bed and sits in her rocking chair to recite her rosary, the beads sliding through her gnarled fingers, one at a time.
Baba Petrenko was there for them after Sarah’s mother left. It shamed her that her own daughter would do something like that — Sarah was sure of it — but she never spoke a harsh word about her youngest daughter. Olivia couldn’t be tamed, Baba said, and was born with the same restless nature as her father. He had up and left them all for Alberta after the war, saying he wasn’t cut out to be a farmer. Baba helped as much as she could, bringing over roasters of peroheh and holoptsi whenever some neighbour drove her to town. She gave them sacks of potatoes and tubs full of carrots, jars of fruit and pickles and jam. Sarah, especially, spent as much time as she could with her grandmother even when they were older and the boys no longer wanted to come.
“Baba? Do you remember how you felt when you fell in love?” Sarah asks, taking another bite of her bun.
“Ya. My head feels like full of sawdust and I would do stupid things. He was all I could think about. And my stomach, too. Like bird wings flapping in there when I see him.” She clasps the arms of her chair and shifts her swollen legs, wincing in pain. “Why you want to know?”
“Just curious, I guess,” Sarah says. “I’ve been thinking about what it might be like.”
“Oy,” Baba says, taking a sip of tea and smiling. “So there’s a boy. You want to tell me about him?”
Sarah finds herself opening up and telling Baba about Jack and the near-accident and the way she felt when she first saw him.
“Bilyk, you say?” Baba puts one finger up to her lips and furrows her brow. “How old he is? Twenty, something like that?”
“Maybe a little older. Why?”
“His mother, she brought him to me. Was raining hard that night, I remember.”
Sarah sits up straight in her chair. “Do you remember what was wrong with him?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Bad dreams. Scared to go to bed at night.” She pauses then glances at the blessed icon on the small table. “Is God’s will, what the wax shows, but that night, I don’t know.” She shakes her head and makes the sign of the cross.
“Why? What was it?” Sarah pictures Jack, a scared and helpless little boy, sitting in this very room, maybe in the exact same spot she’s sitting right now.
“Most times, I see one thing in wax, only one, and I know right away what it is, but that time, I see two. The one, I knew right away it was fire. Flames, like little tongues across the water; easy to see. But then I see something else in water, a string curls out, reaches up to ceiling. Up, up. Maybe six inches. How wax can do that?”
“What did it mean?” Sarah is on the edge of her chair.
“I explain about fire and his mother, right away she says there was grass fire on farm, the boy, he had to run for help. Can hardly reach crank from chair. But he rings. Someone answers and neighbours, they come and help put out fire before barn burns down. But that wax standing up like that? I say nothing.” She raises one arm and pushes the air with her upturned palm. “So I chase away boy’s fear, the way my mother show me.”
“Holy,” Sarah breathes. This story about Jack is something special she’ll keep. She feels closer to him somehow, just knowing it.
“First and last time I see him. They never come back.” Baba is looking at Sarah, her eyes narrowed. “I remember something else. You were here, upstairs sleeping. Maybe that’s why wax point like that to ceiling?” She nods her head. “Ya, that’s why.” She pauses, nodding her head with more certainty. “You know how I say everything happens, happens for reason? This boy, this Jack Bilyk, it was God put him on that road in that truck. To protect you. Someday, he will be yours.”