MAY SLIPPED PAST, and with it the afternoon with Claire, try as he might to believe it or some version of it would happen again. She didn’t touch him that way again, nothing in her voice invited him that close. She still smiled at him nevertheless, she’d hug him in the kitchen with Starr looking on, josh him, kid him. And he talked to her as if nothing had happened, too proud to let her know how well he remembered a kiss. It was just the way things had come together that afternoon, the fog closing them away from the rest of the world, her mood, the weed. He wanted her to sense that he understood. But he didn’t, and trying to puzzle her out only put her in his mind more and more.
He found her swinging the mattock in a cool and windy sun. She had hacked up a small patch of pasture, torn out thick sods, exposing red-brown soil underneath. She looked happy, her hair wind-tossed, her skin darker already against the sleeves of a yellow blouse, and the sight of her got to him quick. The field greening in with new grass, and her in it alone. But Starr was always in the wings, somewhere.
“You’re working up a sweat, Miss Claire.”
“I am.” She leaned on the pick handle laughing, getting her breath. “I’m tilling a little garden. Toiling at least. Look at the blister, will you!” She let the pick fall and held out her palm. Innis glanced toward the house where two white shirts of Starr’s flapped on the clothesline. Curtains breathed in and out of an upstairs window. He took her hand and blew softly on her skin.
“Gloves, girl, is what you need. Hard labor.”
She withdrew her hand and looked at him. She smiled, brushed her hair back. “I have to dig this up or I’ll lose my momentum, no? Want to help?”
“I’d help you with anything, Claire.” He crushed a clod of dirt in his hand. “I’ve got to tell you, I think about you too much.”
She’d taken up the spade and was turning the soil, red-brown bladefuls, and chopping it finer.
“You remember that foggy afternoon? I bet you don’t.”
“Yes I do,” she said. “But you know …” She nodded toward the house. “Starr will go only so far with you, and with you and me. That was full of risks, that afternoon. Sweet ones maybe, but I like it here, Innis. I want to stay awhile.”
“How long?”
“Awhile. Why should I tell you how long, and you so keen to be away from here?”
“Hard for me to believe you would stay, that’s all. You’ve been places. You’ve been out in the world.”
“Yes. But I’m resting, you could look at it that way. A break from a bad situation.”
“Then what?”
“You want to be sure about everything, Innis. I can’t help you there. But we could break up this dirt and get some seeds in, couldn’t we do that?”
“Might still get a frost, you know.”
“But we’re not afraid of frosts, are we, you and me?”
They worked without speaking. Innis chopped the soil, two-handing the spade handle, drawing it up eye level and plunging its blade deep into the dirt. Claire combed a rake through behind him. The sun was constantly attended by clouds, the air shadowed and then bright over and over, wind beating away even the persistent blackflies. Innis kept at it, his wind was good anyway, he could dig out a whole field for her if she asked him, and he could hear her breath too, behind him, a little quicker than his, and that would have to do for now.
“Claire, what’re you planting?”
“Just flowers. I never had time for a garden with Russ. Horses are a lot of work, they need attention. But the horses are all gone now.”
“Bulbs of some kind are coming up by the front step. Granny’s, Starr says, from years back.”
“Sure. Irises, I bet. Day lilies later. Then hollyhocks higher than your head. You find them around the old houses.”
“That looks like an iris in the field there, where it’s damp.”
“It’s a wild iris, a blue flag, really.”
“I didn’t know irises could be wild.”
“Blue ones. Maybe others I don’t know about.”
“The lilac’s out. You smell it yet?”
“Oh, gorgeous. Isn’t it powerful?”
“It must get in Starr’s window up there. Must drive him nuts.”
“He’s nervous as a cat today.”
“Summer getting to him, is it?”
“So to us all. Ever see air so clear?”
“It could be warmer, if it’s summer we’re talking about. Be hotter in Boston long about now.”
Innis shaped seed furrows with the tip of the mattock. In his face she fanned out seed packets like a hand of cards. “Take your pick. Nasturtiums, lots of those. Poppies. Petunias, marigolds. Color is what I want.”
“Should’ve started those indoors, Claire. It’s June already.”
“Like you started yours?”
Innis didn’t answer. He looked toward the house, took a breather. “I shouldn’t tell you any more about it. I shouldn’t tell you anything about myself.”
“Why?” She was crouching along a furrow tapping seeds out of a packet, the knees of her jeans damp from the soil.
“A word here, a word there, and my uncle …”
“My uncle what?” Starr had come into the field, frowning, the breeze covering his footsteps. “Am I missing something?”
He looks tired, that was Innis’s first thought, or something like tired. “This little garden here,” Innis said, grinning, jamming his spade in the ground like a spear. “Claire wanted to surprise you.”
“I’m sure she’s got surprises in her.”
With her shoe Claire pressed a row of soil down carefully, not looking at him. “I wanted flowers we can see from the windows.”
“You’ll be lucky if you do,” Starr said, blowing smoke from a fresh Export. “I saw you out here slaving away. I thinks, they have to be planting, or digging a grave. I hope it isn’t mine.”
“Starr, don’t be morbid,” Claire said.
“I could think of better spots for a grave,” Innis said.
“Woods are full of them,” Starr said.
“What are those gulls circling for?” Innis pointed to a dozen seagulls dipping and crying above the woods to the east.
“That’s the old MacLeod place. No MacLeods there anymore, but the smelt are running in their brook. Spawning time.” Starr went on across the field.
“What’s he going over there for?” Innis said. “Never seen him in the barn.”
“He’s thinking he might cut hay this year.”
“What’ll he harness that old mower to, the Lada?”
“He’s doing it by hand he said. Scything it, I guess.” Claire stood up and looked toward the barn as if to verify this. “Good thing no cows are waiting for it.”
“He seems a little glum lately,” Innis said. “That could be good or bad, I suppose, depending on how you look at it.”
Claire balled up an empty seed packet and tossed it aside. “Russ showed up at the shop yesterday. I was helping your uncle straighten out his books.”
“His books?” Innis laughed. “Some books. A mess when I saw them.”
“Do you know how complicated it is?” she said, her voice low.
“What is?”
“The three of us, here. This is his house, you know.”
“I didn’t know that?”
“Listen for a minute. I left Russ because somehow I’d come to stand for his disappointments, and there he was right there in Starr’s shop, all ruffed up and giving us both the bad mouth. He’s bigger than Starr, you know, he’s a big man. But Starr took him by the throat and choked him until he couldn’t spit out another rotten word and then he threw him out the door, he said he’d kill him if he came back.”
“Starr couldn’t kill anybody,” Innis said.
“Russ doesn’t know that.”
“Sergeant Corbett of The Royal Mounted. So now you love him, is that it?”
“Oh, I don’t know if it’s love, Innis, no. Do you know what that is? I don’t think you do.”
“I might surprise you, girl.”
“You might surprise yourself, boy.”
She exchanged a smile with him, tearing open another seed packet with her teeth. She chewed the bit of paper slowly, rolled it on her tongue and spat it at him. Innis smiled sadly, shook his head.
“Claire, do you think I’m a stick of wood or what?” He stomped the last furrow flat. “Am I supposed to forget that afternoon?”
“Forget it for now,” she said. “Please.” She touched her finger to his mouth, left the grit of clay on his lips. But, feeling his uncle behind him, he turned to see Starr making his way into the grass of the lower field, a scythe raised high by the throat like a weapon. He brought it down and then stood finishing a cigarette. Then slowly, almost thoughtfully, he swung into motion, sweeping the blade side to side, its fresh edge flashing.
“Look at Father Time over there,” Innis said.
Claire punched his shoulder. “Innis, I wouldn’t let him hear you. He’s not in the mood.”
“Oh, to hell with him, Claire. I’ve got a garden to get in myself.”
“Not today?”
“It’s a secret. I hope.”
“So do I, dear.”
Innis glanced up at a contrail, a slow chalky stroke in the blue afternoon sky. The plane was tiny, higher than the prop plane that had brought him here from Halifax.
“At least I’m growing something on this land. Starr’s waltzing with a scythe.”