Cramped between her husband and her father-in-law, Ruby set her jaw and stared fiercely toward town.
“The old couch is good enough,” Ansford said. “It’s just for sitting.”
“It’s got the spring through,” she replied to her husband before she could stop herself. She had resolved to argue no more. They had argued since Christmas. Arguing was delaying and she was through delaying. Her mind was made up.
“You can sit to one side,” Jacob countered. “You don’t got to sit on the spring.”
On either side, trees rose toward them in a black line, then rushed past with a jerk as though they had been attached to a string that somebody had pulled. Ruby had not been to town for twelve months and the sameness of the road depressed her. She had remembered the countryside as having more variety.
There was no traffic. They had not seen a car since they had left the island. Nor were there any houses or farms. Occasionally, a slash in the thick bush would mark the way to one of the temporary lumber camps that dotted the area. Now that the ground had thawed, most of the camps were abandoned. A few had caretakers, men who had become so bushed they could not bear going to town. When she had first been married to Ansford, Ruby had gone with him to deliver potatoes and fish to a camp. It had been a poor kind of place—a rough clearing dotted with stumps. There had been two bunkhouses on skids, piles of sawdust. There had been a caretaker, a little man with a wooden leg he had carved himself. He wore his pant leg folded back at the knee, and he had painted a blue pant leg with a wide cuff, a red sock and a black shoe on the wooden stump. When they had come, he had hidden behind a sawdust pile for five minutes, coming out only when Ansford held up a mickey of whiskey. After three or four drinks, he had invited them into his caboose. Standing along one wall were half a dozen legs, some with green pants, some with gray, some with galoshes, others with rubber boots. The sight had given her quite a turn. She was not, Ruby had told herself then, going to become like that.
“Aren’t you going awfully fast?” she asked, as Ansford pulled the truck out of a skid that nearly put them into the ditch. The tie rods were worn and the truck, at the slightest excuse, was inclined to wander.
The roads were barely wide enough for two cars to pass. The edges rose toward the centre to form a convex surface. No matter how much gravel was dumped during the winter, the moment the spring thaw began, the piles of stone sank from sight.
Ansford was too busy wrestling the wheel to reply. Jacob jerked his thumb at the ceiling.
“Going to rain,” he said, as though she could not see for herself. Clouds lay in overlapping bands like windrows of grey stone. “We should go home.” Raising his voice to be heard over the gravel drumming like hail on the underside of the truck, he repeated, “Going to rain. Better go home.”
Ruby leaned forward, her face composed. She pretended she did not hear him. Ansford glanced at his father, but the truck immediately swerved toward the left and he had to haul on the wheel. Although they were not long on the road, his eyes had taken on a wild look and his dark hair stuck out in spikes.
“Go back,” her father-in-law intoned. Ruby sniffed. She refused to have anything to do with him unless he had his teeth in. He had a long, lean face that was the duplicate of his son’s except that it ended in a collapsed mouth that looked like a shell crater. His false teeth bulged in his shirt pocket. Despite her efforts to get him to wear them regularly, he stubbornly kept them in a sandwich bag and refused to wear them except for special occasions.
Ruby secretly studied Ansford’s face. Ever since she had first met her father-in-law, she had watched her husband’s teeth surreptitiously, finding excuses to look in his mouth. He had already lost two teeth and that worried her. One had become infected for no reason. The other had broken while he was cracking hazelnuts. Certain that this was the beginning of a dental disaster, at night when Ansford was asleep, she sometimes rolled back his lip and inspected his teeth as carefully as those of a prize horse.
The three of them had started their trip at five o’clock that morning. She had been so determined to get an early start that she had gone downstairs at four to sit beside the door, her suitcase at her knee. For the trip, she wore rubber boots, slacks, two sweaters and a parka. In her suitcase she had a dress, a hat with two blue plastic daisies, black shoes and a cloth coat. She also had clothes for Ansford and Jacob.
Her husband and father-in-law had come downstairs reluctantly. Ansford had come first, Jacob muttering behind him. Normally, both of them sat at the kitchen table, but for the last week, as her determination to buy a new couch had become apparent, they had taken to sitting on the old couch to show her how much wear was still in it. She had not given them an opportunity to delay her but had, on the stroke of five, the agreed-upon time, picked up her suitcase and started for the dock. Ansford and Jacob had trailed a couple of yards in her wake.
Neither of them was much good at hurrying at the best of times, but they had hung back like two stone anchors that she had to drag forward with every step. There were no lights in the five houses they passed. She could hear her own breathing and the swish of her boots on the grass. The lake, in this hour before dawn, was flat and dark as asphalt. She climbed down to the skiff, took her place on the middle seat and sat stiffly, waiting, like a queen about to be transported to another country.
The wind they made as they crossed the half-mile to the mainland was bitter. The ice had broken up only the week before, and rafted ice still stood in piles along the shore like a line of hunchbacked dwarves. As the island faded, the mainland appeared, a solider darkness against the purple sky. Their truck was parked among a dozen vehicles owned by the people who lived on the island. There was no ferry service. Anyone who did not have a boat had to sit and flash his car lights until he was noticed. Then someone came to pick him up.
“We’re going on a fool’s errand,” her father-in-law had said as he climbed into the truck.
When the time came, she thought, burying him would be a chore. While they were carrying the casket to the graveyard, he would still manage to mutter complaints about the inconvenience.
Dawn had been a thin red line enameled to the tops of the trees on the far shore. The line of colour between the sombre darkness of sky, land and water lasted only a few minutes; then thick, solid-looking clouds had filled the gap. In the gloom, lined with forest on both sides, covered over with low clouds so heavy they seemed about to fall, the road might have been the bottom of a trench.
Ruby looked up as a flurry of rain scattered over the windshield. There was a pause that was just long enough to give them hope the rain would hold off for another hour. Thunder shook the side windows of the truck. Before the noise had faded, rain poured down. Ahead, the road darkened. Ansford flicked on the windshield wipers. He jerked his foot off the gas pedal and let the truck glide in neutral until they had slowed to twenty.
Neither of them, she thought with a small flush of resentment as she looked at the mud, ever remembered to take off his shoes at the door. It was a constant source of aggravation. No matter how often she washed the floors, they were never clean. Both men left trails of mud wherever they went. She had tried putting a mat outside the door. When that had not worked, she had added a sign saying “Boots here.” She had spread newspaper inside the door. Finally, when it rained, she had taken to making a path of newspaper from the back door to every room in the house. The first time she had done it, they had carefully sidestepped the paper, certain it was for something special.
Ansford and she had met at an upgrading class in Winnipeg. The government was paying them both to attend so that they would not be counted as unemployed. For Ansford, squeezed between a bad fishing season and the need for new nets, it was a chance to get cash money. For Ruby, it was a chance to get off her feet. She had been a cashier at Safeway for five years. Nine months of the year, a cold wind blew across the floor every time a customer came in or went out. The manager, thinking it would keep the customers’ minds off rising grocery prices, insisted that the girls wear short skirts and shoes instead of boots. The constant standing on concrete had covered her calves with a fine mesh of red veins.
Ansford had brought her to the island late one night. Douglas McBrie had taken them across. He had said nothing to either of them, but as she was climbing out of the boat Ruby heard Ansford say, “I got her and a new outboard while I was in the city.”
Ansford had told her he had a house and furniture. Her father-in-law came as a surprise. When they arrived, the house was dark and silent. She and Ansford, exhausted from a long day on the road, had gone straight to bed. He had fallen asleep but she, overtired and excited by the unfamiliarity of the house that was to be her home, had been unable to sleep. Restless and not wanting to wake Ansford, she had started to go downstairs. Jacob had been standing in his nightshirt in the hallway, a tall, thin ghost with knock knees. She had been wearing a blue flannel nightgown and had her hair set with pink plastic curlers. Jacob and she had stood rooted in place. The look that crept onto his face as the shock passed made her feel like the whore of Babylon. Wordlessly, she had fled, shutting the door behind her and dragging a chest of drawers against it.
The next morning, Ansford explained to Jacob that he had married. Jacob had nodded, but his eyes and the pensive set of his mouth revealed that he did not really believe it. Even the marriage certificate did not erase his lingering doubt. She and Ansford had been married twelve years, but Ruby was sure that Jacob, somewhere deep behind his eyes, believed they were living in sin.
The truck began to jerk. Ruby looked up. “What’s the matter?” she asked sharply.
“Mud,” Jacob yelled. His hearing was not good. To hear his own voice, he had to shout.
Ansford was pressed so close to the steering wheel that he seemed to be impaled upon it.
Ruby braced her feet on the floor and raised herself from the seat so that she could see herself in the mirror. She had carefully set her hair the night before, but already the violent motion of the truck was making it untidy. Swaying with the truck, she used her fingers to comb her hair into place. She prided herself on not letting her standards go. Many of the women did. They looked fine, but the moment they got married it was as though some tightly twisted rubber band inside them was snipped and they began to fall apart. Every Friday, she religiously set her hair and changed the bed sheets. Some women she knew never combed their hair, never mind set it, and changed the linens every spring. She had told Ansford right after they married that she could not live like that.
Jacob guarded his sheets as if they were jewels. At first she had fought with him, but gradually, she had learned to have her way without conflict. She simply waited until he left the house, and since none of the doors, including the outer ones, had locks, she went into his room and remade his bed. Occasionally, if his liver was bothering him, he still berated her, beating his fist on the table, shouting, “You leave my sheets alone, you hear! They’re fine. You’ll just wear them out.” Of late, she had noticed that his voice was no longer sharpened by conviction.
Instructed by the country memories of parents who had moved to the city when she was only two, she had come prepared for the wrong battle. Life on the island was not endless visiting in other people’s kitchens. Work seldom ceased. Leisure was idleness forced upon people by blizzards. The men cut, repaired, dug, ploughed and fished endlessly. Their wives, inundated with children, never gave over cooking, washing and mending.
Ansford geared down to second. The truck, like a cow that has tried to dodge one way, then another, and failed to escape the drover’s switch, settled into a steady run. Ruby opened her purse. It was the shape and size of a shopping bag and made of purple plastic. She took out a round mirror so she could check her makeup. Her face was broad as a pumpkin. Although she constantly dieted, she was still heavy. Hard work had settled her flesh downward like buckshot in a cloth bag.
Jacob’s left arm was flung along the back of the seat. He gripped the metal rail fiercely. His long legs were stretched out, and his right foot jerked up and down every time the truck began to skid. His face was strained.
Ruby leaned toward him and held the mirror in front of his face. “Put in your teeth,” she yelled in his ear. “You don’t want to get killed looking like that.”
He jerked his head around like a hawk and tried to stare down his nose at her, but he could not keep his eyes off the road. He could stand in an open boat five mües from land with waves twenty feet tall flinging him about like a cork while he picked fish out of his nets, but he left the island so seldom that each journey took all his courage. Having to ride over bad roads made it worse.
“We got to go back,” he shouted. “It ain’t worth it to have a new couch.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Ruby saw Ansford sneak a glance at her. She knew that if she showed even a moment’s weakness, he would turn around and race back home.
“Keep going,” she ordered. She was glad she was two years older than he. If she had not been, she would not have had the sense to know that he needed to be told what to do.
“I can’t take much more of this,” Ansford said. He was holding the wheel so hard that he looked as if he were going to pull it loose. He did not drive much, and when he did, he preferred to travel in the centre of the road at thirty miles an hour. At such times, he sat as far back on the seat as he could, his chest thrown out and his head tipped up so that he was just seeing under the sun visor.
“I got to stop,” he said, his voice a defeated whine. Ahead, a driveway made a shallow loop nearly parallel with the road. A tall gas pump with a round glass top like a fish bowl sat in the centre of the driveway. On the edge of the bush, a low green building squatted close to the ground. Ansford parked beside a black Chevrolet with orange ball fringe on all the windows.
They stopped at the door and, leaning in, their heads pressed together like balls, studied the interior. A naked light bulb burned over a single pool table. A group of eight Indians were frozen into position around the green felt, their eyes not looking anywhere, their ears listening to every sound. Ansford led the way to a counter with four stools.
“Bad day to be out,” a fat man in tweed pants and a white shirt said. On the pocket someone had embroidered Jimmy. The left corner of his mouth and his left eyelid drooped. The last part of each word he said was slurred.
“Whad he say?” Jacob demanded, rifling his pockets for change.
“He said it was a bad day out,” Ansford said. Ruby was sitting between them so Ansford had to lean steeply to one side to get his mouth close to his father’s ear.
The Indians had started to play pool again, but when Ansford shouted, they froze into place, shining under the light like pieces of old walnut furniture.
“A bad day,” Jacob repeated, nodding to himself, his eyes reflective. He turned to Ruby, thrust his face close to hers and bellowed, “It’s a bad day for being out. We should turn around and go home.”
“Coffee,” Ruby said. “Black.”
“Whad she say?” Jacob asked Ansford.
The Indians still had not moved.
“Coffee,” Ansford replied at the top of his voice.
Jacob nodded vigorously. “Me, too.”
Jimmy brought their order for them, dropping the heavy white crockery with a clatter.
“You must be Jimmy,” Ruby said.
The fat man shook his head. “I’m Bill.”
“Whad he say?” Jacob asked.
“My name’s Bill,” the fat man shouted.
They all studied his pocket. He looked down.
“Got these at an auction,” he explained, raising his voice as if he were talking to a multitude. “They all got different names on them.”
“It says Jimmy,” Jacob insisted.
Before Bill could explain again, Ruby said, “I don’t remember you from last year.”
“Christmas,” he replied. “Under new ownership. Had a sign. Wind blew it down.” He shouted each phrase so that Jacob could hear.
“You from the city?” Ruby asked. He nodded. “I seen your white shirt and I knew.” She shot a glance full of reproval at Ansford. “My husband’s got a white shirt. He won’t wear it but once a year.”
Ansford leaned closer to his coffee. He had spread his elbows on the counter and was counting the different kinds of candy bars. There were five kinds he had not eaten.
“I’d give a dollar to go back home right now,” Jacob declared.
“You’d think we made him come.” Ruby pressed her lips together in mild indignation the way she might with a child. “He complains all the time, but if we leave him alone for half an hour, he comes looking for us.”
“The road’s bad farther on,” Bill said.
“You seen these?” Jacob asked. He dug into his jacket pocket and held out a rooster carved from a forked stick. “I sold lots of these. Dollar apiece.”
Bill saw Ruby looking at the name on his pocket. “Tomorrow, I’ll be Norman. The day after that, Robert.”
“If you bought five for a dollar each,” Jacob said, peering at Bill’s face, trying to see if there was a flicker of interest, “you could sell them for a dollar seventy-five.”
“How do you know who you are?” Ansford burst out. “Every day you’ve got a different name.”
Jacob was holding the rooster between his thumb and forefinger, twirling it around so that all its good points would be revealed. Bill turned back and nearly got the rooster in the eye.
“He likes to whittle,” Ruby said. “Finish up,” she said to Ansford. Ansford was trying to make his coffee last as long as possible.
Bill reached a large hand under the counter and drew out a brown envelope. “Would you deliver this to the garage? It’s a cheque for some car parts. They won’t send any more until they get paid.”
Ruby slid off the stool. “Not much business here.” She took the envelope and squashed it into her jacket pocket.
“Suits me.” He folded his hands over this stomach. “Had a stroke. Can’t do more than a little.”
“I wish you luck.” She said it with solemnity, the way she might to someone who had declared he was going to jump off a cliff and try to fly.
“I got a pension.”
Ruby adjusted her head scarf and started for the door. Behind her, Bill called, “It ain’t much but everybody’s got to have something to keep him going.”
They hurried through the rain that cut across the sky. The drops fell with such force that the water might have collected around a centre of lead. Inside the cab, Jacob said petulantly, “If you’d a just waited, I’d a sold him some carving.” When he felt unjustly treated, he had a way of drawing his eyebrows together until they nearly touched.
The road was as slick as if it had been greased. Rain fell steadily. The ditches were full. Ruts had become long bands of nearly black water.
Jacob sat deep in thought for the first mile and she thought he was sulking, but all at once he straightened up, looked at them both and said, “He must be hard of hearing. He certainly shouts a lot.”
They travelled the next thirty miles in silence. Because of the rain there was nothing to see, and Ruby and Jacob fell into a light doze until Ansford startled them by sharply calling out a warning.
They were approaching a bog. The land on either side of the road was a sea of moss. Full-grown trees were not more than three feet high. When they crossed the edge of the bog, it was as if the truck had been grabbed from behind. Their bodies were flung forward. Ansford gunned the motor. The truck jerked so violently that it felt as if the transmission had been ripped out. Ansford slammed the truck into second, then first. It was no use. The truck slowed; the motor coughed and died. Ruby could feel the wheels sinking.
They sat, staring into the rain. There was nothing before them except empty road and endless forest. On either side of them, there was forest. Behind them, blurred by rain, the trees went on until the road disappeared and the two dark lines converged.
“We can’t stay here,” she said.
“We’re twenty miles from town,” Ansford protested.
“We can’t go back. We’ve come too far.”
Ansford looked out the rear window. When he turned back, the skin on his face was tight with worry.
“We should of stayed home,” Jacob wailed. “I told you. Every year it’s the same. The ice goes off the lake and she’s got to go town for something.”
“Let’s go,” she said, her voice determined. “Sitting here talking isn’t going to get us anywhere.”
She gave Ansford a shove with her hip.
“I’m not going,” Jacob screamed. “I’m an old man. My legs won’t take it.”
Ruby gave Ansford another shove. He opened his door and got out. He lifted Ruby’s suitcase out of the wooden box on the back of the truck. As they started away, Jacob yelled, once more, “I’m not going. I don’t have to go just because you say so.”
The rain beat on them as they ploughed through the mud. Mud clung to their boots like paste. Mud splashed up their legs. With every step, Ruby had to pull her foot loose. The ground was a quagmire. Each time she lifted her feet, more mud clung to them. After fifteen minutes her feet were so grotesquely large that she had to stop. Behind her, she heard water splash.
She turned around. Jacob was standing nearly on her heels. His shoulders were hunched together. Water streamed through his thin hair and poured in a steady stream from his nose. Bending over to protect it from the rain, she reached into her purse and took out a second rain cap of clear plastic. She pulled the cap over Jacob’s head and tied the bow beneath his chin.
Seeing his dismay, she shouted, “Nobody’s going to see you.”
Ansford came up to them with sticks of willow that he had cut. He had flattened one end. With these, they pried the mud from their boots.
The rain swept down, engulfing them, breaking over their heads and shoulders like surf.
Ruby tried various strategies. She tried to pick her way carefully, placing her feet where the gravel was thickest. All that happened was that both mud and gravel came up together. She tried walking on the high spots on the theory that the ground would not be so wet. Then, in the hope that the water would wash her boots clean, she walked in the ruts. Nothing worked. After a while, the weight of the mud on each foot was so great that she had to swing her legs stiffly from the hips.
When they reached what she estimated was the second mile, she checked her watch. It was fifteen after twelve and they had eighteen miles to go. She looked back. The truck had disappeared behind a curtain of rain. In front of them was an endless stretch of mud and sodden trees. All she wanted was to reach the town. The thought that they still had eighteen miles to go made her waver. At the moment, if she could have, she might have agreed to return home. Since that was impossible, she forced herself ahead by thinking about lying in bed at the hotel and watching TV.
At one-thirty they had to stop to rest. They had walked the last half-mile on rising ground, and the going had been easier. Now, the ground sloped down again. As she stood looking along the road, Ruby’s thigh muscles felt as if they had been pulled loose. Water was seeping through the seams of her jacket.
“We’ve got to keep going,” Ansford said. Shorter and broader than his father, he still looked lean and hard. He was slightly bandy-legged, and his wet trousers clinging to him emphasized the two outward curves. Water dripped from his plaid cap. He took it off and wrung it out.
He was slow to make up his mind, but once he had, there was no stopping him.
They started off again. Lifting her feet hurt so much that Ruby thought of taking off her boots and socks. Less mud, she was sure, would cling to her skin. She rejected the idea because the mud, only recently thawed, was still cold. Her breathing was beginning to be laboured, her breath whistling in her head. She shivered and wished that she had something hot to drink.
Darkness settled over them so gradually that she was not aware of the fading light until she began to find it difficult to see Ansford. Earlier, she had been worried about being caught on the road in the dark. Now, she was too tired to care.
The rain still fell, no longer in torrents, but in a steady, chilling drizzle. Her legs were soaked. Her face was numb.
The walking had turned to stumbling. There were pauses between steps. At last, they stopped and huddled together.
“How far do you think it is?” she asked.
“Ten miles,” Ansford replied, “maybe eleven.”
“We’ve walked all day,” Jacob cried, his voice thin as a spider web.
They staggered forward for another hour. Ruby’s feet, heavy as cast iron, dragged through the mud. When she realized that Jacob no longer was behind her, she called Ansford. They started back. They found Jacob sitting in a rut. Ansford took one arm, Ruby took the other. Between them, they heaved him to his feet. Since he could go no farther, they led him to the edge of the forest. Even here, under a canopy of branches, rain sifted down upon them. They stood dumbly, unable to see, too tired to want to do anything except lie down and rest.
They turned Jacob in a half-circle, positioned him between two saplings rising from a single root. They pushed him down, cramming him between two trunks so that he was firmly held in place. Ruby sat on the left, Ansford on the right. Oblivious to the rain and their aching bodies, they fell asleep.
Ruby woke up cold. She could not feel anything from the waist down, and at first, she was not sure where she was. Her legs were stretched out before her like two dead weights pinning her to the sodden ground. She lifted her left arm to pluck at her parka and tried to pull it more tightly about her. She was, she realized, still leaning against Jacob. His chin rested on his chest. She knew he was still alive because she could see his nose dilate with each breath. Ansford had fallen over and lay on his back, his mouth open. She wondered, her thoughts distant, detached, how it was that he had not drowned. Mercifully, the rain was only a fine mist.
Grasping the tree with one hand, she pulled herself to her knees. Gradually, as she kneaded her legs, the blood came back into them. She dragged herself to her feet. She did not dare let go of the tree. Her suitcase, she noticed, lay beside Ansford’s hand. She was glad that she had wrapped all their belongings in plastic.
She reached out with her toe and jabbed Ansford. He did not move. She kicked harder, digging her toe into his ribs. He opened his eyes, lay staring at the clouds, then closed his eyes again. She kicked him hard enough to hurt her big toe.
“Get up,” she said. Her throat was so cold that the words were a croak. “You’ve got to get up.” She had never quit shivering and every time she shut her eyes she had the sensation of falling. She knew that she could do nothing without him.
He opened his eyes, coughed twice, rolled over and pushed himself up. He looked as if he had been dug out of a grave. He was covered from head to foot in mud. Pressed into the mud were twigs, leaves, grass, pine needles, even a couple of feathers. His hair was matted, his eyes sunken.
“Jacob,” Ruby said. She slapped him on the back. He groaned. She hit him twice more. He stared dumbly, his eyes unfocussed. They each took an arm, and because they were weak with hunger and cold, they had to strain to pull him free. At first, he was a dead weight. They walked him in a tight circle, around and around in the wet grass. His legs kept collapsing. One moment his legs held him, then they gave out and he dropped to his knees. Each time, grunting, one hand under each armpit, the other braced just above his elbow, they levered him up. It was like walking a horse with severe colic.
“We’d better get going,” Ansford said. He picked up the suitcase.
The day before, mud had clung to their boots. Now, the mud was the consistency of tomato soup. With each step, Ruby sank past her ankles. She could think of nothing except being dry and warm and eating platters of food. Gradually, walking warmed her, but her hunger grew into a savage pain. Even that, however, passed into a dull ache. She felt as though she had swallowed a large, smooth stone.
It was noon when they heard a noise like distant thunder. At first, they ignored it. They staggered forward, their bodies lurching from side to side.
Lifting her eyes from the mud, Ruby looked past the rounded hump of Ansford’s back. Moving slowly toward them was a tractor. Ansford looked up and stopped. She saw his shoulders settle as though air had been holding them up and had suddenly been released. She thought he might fall down, but instead, he stood wedged in the mud like a fence post. Ruby stopped, grateful not to have to lift her feet again. She could hear Jacob splashing behind her. When he came abreast, she caught his arm sharply.
He had been walking automatically, his body moving independently of any thought. Her fingers on his jacket sleeve stopped him as completely as if someone had turned off a switch. He stood and stumbled, docile as a tamed animal. The tractor churned toward them.
The tractor driver’s back was covered in mud kicked up by the chains. He grinned at them, then got down and gave each of them a hand up.
“Bill at Halfway House phoned to say you were bringing some money he owed me. When you didn’t arrive, I figured I’d better come looking for you.”
“Spent the night in the bush,” Ansford replied.
“Looks like it,” the driver said and turned the tractor around.
There was no place to sit, so they rode standing, Ruby and Jacob on either side of the driver, Ansford on the hitch. They climbed down in the middle of Main Street. The rain had melted the mud just enough to spread it evenly over them. Jacob still had on Ruby’s head cover.
The tractor driver promised to bring in the truck; then Ruby led the way to the hotel. They rented a room with a double bed and had a cot put in for Jacob.
Ruby had a hot shower with her clothes on. When the water running along the bottom of the tub was no longer grey, she peeled off her parka, waited for the water to clear again, then undressed completely. She washed, changed into the clothes she had brought, then helped Jacob into the bathroom. He moved stiffly. He tried to undo his jacket and could not, so she stood him in the tub and turned on the shower. She undid his parka. The warm water started to revive him. She helped him off with his sweater, undid his shirt and pulled it off. She threw everything into the tub to be washed later. He let her pull off his socks, but when she started to undo his pants, he protested. She told him to be quiet or she’d call Ansford to come and hold him still.
When he stood in nothing but his long underwear, she gave him the soap and left.
Ansford lay curled before the door on a wad of old newspapers, which the desk clerk had given them. All the time he waited, he shivered and jerked. Except for his eyes, he was completely caked in mud, and as it dried, it stiffened so that he looked like an unfinished statue.
Ruby laid out their clothes. She did not have much room in the suitcase, but she had managed to bring a change of clothes for each of them, including white shirts for both men.
While Ansford was washing, she took their dirty clothes to the basement of the hotel and washed and dried them. When she went back upstairs, Ansford and Jacob looked scrubbed and brushed. The three of them went to the dining room and ate two platters of ham and eggs each and drank twelve cups of coffee between them. By the time they were finished, they all had a satisfied, glazed look.
Ruby led them down the sidewalk to the Red and White Hardware and Furniture store. A salesman in a brown suit scurried out from behind a small forest of pole lamps. Ruby scanned the room. The salesman, his eyes full of anticipation, his hands washing themselves in little circular motions, darted this way and that.
“I heard you’ve got a blue couch for sale,” Ruby said. “We need a new one.”
The salesman lifted himself up on his toes as though he were a ballet dancer and, wobbling, looked across the array of couches. “I’ve got a nice red one,” he said.
“You’ve got a blue one,” Ruby insisted. “With pansies. I heard at Christmas you had it.”
“I sold that months ago,” he said.
“I wanted blue,” Ruby insisted.
The salesman asked her to wait, hurried away and came back in a minute with a catalogue. He pointed out a picture of a blue chesterfield and offered to order it.
“It’s not the way I imagined it.” Ruby pursed her lips in disapproval.
“I got others,” the salesman said.
“No,” Ruby answered. “It isn’t what I thought.” Her decision made, she turned around and herded the two men before her.
“I told you,” Jacob whispered indignantly to Ansford. He moved his teeth about with his tongue. “I told you she wouldn’t buy it. Every year it’s the same.” His voice carried all the way to the other side of the street.
Ruby ignored her father-in-law and stood, her hands on her hips, looking with satisfaction up and down Centre Street. It was only a block long, but the stores were deep and contained a host of objects. There were women in town whom she knew well enough to visit, and on Sunday there was a service at the church.
The rain had stopped. The clouds were breaking up to reveal a clear, bright sky. The street, covered with a thin layer of water, looked as if it had been plated with silver. The store signs, swept clean by rain, were bright and shiny.
“All that,” Jacob complained, “for nothing.” But there was no force in his voice, for he was squinting, trying to read a sign on the movie house. In any case, Ansford was paying him no attention. He had turned halfway around to try to identify the half-dozen men who were sitting in the window of the garage.
“What can’t be helped shouldn’t be mourned,” Ruby said, seeing her reflection in a puddle as shiny as a newly minted silver dollar. She tilted her hat so that the flowers showed to more ad-vantage. “We can’t,” she added, “go anywhere until the road dries. There’s today and tomorrow. We’ll just have to make the best of it.”