Dan

Lee is amazed that the horse goes forward so willingly in the late-morning heat across a seemingly endless tract of low dunes and sand flats. Creeping juniper stands out here as an oddity, a sprawling evergreen shrub where tall cactus would be more expected. The breeze—not strong enough to provide any relief—sends wisps of sand snaking their way across the surface. Little snakes of sand. Lee wonders if that’s how the hills got their name. He watches the surface shift before his eyes, fine wavy patterns appearing and then vanishing again. You could stand out here and watch your own footprints disappear, he thinks.

Out of curiosity, he asks the horse to stop, and he watches the sand blow into the hoofprints, feathering the edges and slipping into the holes. As Lee looks back the way he came, he sees his trail becoming less distinct and then disappearing not far from where he’s standing, so that it looks as though the horse emerged out of nowhere. He asks the horse to move forward again and they create new prints, sharp-edged for only seconds.

Besides feeling the effects of the sun, Lee is now feeling the effects of over thirty-five steady miles horseback. He’s thirsty and saddle sore, and he wishes he’d thought to put a cap on his head when he started out. He reaches behind the cantle where he tied his jacket and loosens the saddle strings, planning to use the jacket as a makeshift head covering, but it slips out of his hands and slides to the ground. He doesn’t bother stopping to pick it up. It’s an old jacket, ripped around the pockets and not much good any more without Astrid to patch it. He looks back and watches it settle in the sand, and wonders how long it will be before it’s completely covered. He thinks again of Willard’s camel, wonders if her remains are buried out here somewhere. He pictures a dead camel with clouds of sand blowing over its body, creating a mound, the beginnings of a new dune. Is this how the ancient Egyptians came up with the idea of the pyramids, after watching the wind build massive sand monuments over the dead bodies of camels and horses?

As the sand soaks up the sun’s heat and discharges it back at him like a giant furnace, he stands in the stirrups to try to take some pressure off the tender places, tries to readjust what Lester referred to as his “equipment.” He remembers when Lester first said to him, Don’t get your equipment in a knot, and Lee understood then that Lester thought he was old enough to talk a certain way when they were out of the presence of women. There’s no adjusting that relieves all the sore spots—taking the pressure off one puts more on another—and he feels an inkling of regret that he made the impulsive decision to cross this desolate strip in the heat of the day. But it’s too late now. He must be more than halfway to the Catholic church, and it would be crazy to turn back. There’s a good well in the churchyard, or at least there used to be. He closes his eyes for a few seconds and thinks of water, cool water, like in the old cowboy song that Lester had on a vinyl record. Lee sings for a while, only half remembering the words, something about a cowboy lost in the desert with a horse or a mule named Dan, their throats parched and their souls crying out, but then Lee decides singing takes too much energy and, anyway, the song is depressing and it’s just making him more thirsty.

“Dan,” he says out loud. “That’s a good name for you.” The horse turns his ears in Lee’s direction.

The beating sun adds a silvery sheen to the grey-gold colour that stretches as far as Lee can see. The horse steps without hesitation into the shimmering hot sand, his head high, moving forward, keeping up the same steady pace. He’s an efficient machine, Lee thinks jealously, built for distance, while the man on his back is miserable and about to die from thirst, or at least that’s how he feels.

Until finally Lee sees a road to the northwest, and then the old war memorial comes into view, which means the church is not far ahead and, more important, the well. He turns toward the road and travels westward in the shallow ditch. Sweet clover tempts the horse and he tries to snatch at it, but Lee keeps him moving past the stone memorial and toward the church. Another half-mile and he can see it, a small fieldstone building with white trim, the wooden steeple and cross reaching into the sky. Across the road from the church is George and Anna Varga’s home. The sun reflects brilliant green off the distant poplars and caragana hedges of the Varga yard. Lee knows, without a doubt, the relief that real desert travellers feel when their instincts or their animals successfully lead them to an oasis.

When he reaches the churchyard with its mowed grass and neat picket fence, Lee slides to the ground and carefully lets his body absorb its own weight. Without having to look, he knows the insides of his calves are chafed. He hobbles into the churchyard leading the horse, and latches the gate behind him. The roof of the church has an overhang and Lee makes for the shade it creates and removes the saddle and bridle. The saddle pad is soaked with sweat. As soon as the horse is free, he’s into the dry grass edging the church’s foundation.

Lee heads for the well and takes a long drink directly from the pump, and then splashes water on his head and back, soaking his shirt. There’s a bucket hanging on the pump, which he fills for the horse. He lets him drink a bit, and then he splashes water on the horse’s neck and chest to rinse off the sweat and cool him down. The horse shivers as the cold water hits him, and moves away from it. Lee fills the bucket again and this time he lets the horse drink what he wants, and then he drinks some more himself before stretching out in the shade. He thinks of food and is tempted to go rummaging in the church for something to eat, but he closes his eyes instead. As he nods off, ripples of sand pass endlessly in his head and then turn into waves of water lapping gently against the shore of a sandy beach.

He wakes from a sound sleep to find old George Varga staring down at him.

“So, young Torgeson,” George says, holding out his hand to help Lee to his feet.

As he gets up, Lee tries to hide the fact that his body is badly hurting. He’s glad that George recognizes him, so he doesn’t have to explain who he is.

The horse is nowhere in sight.

George sees Lee looking and points around the side of the church. “Damn bugger’s eating my grass,” he says. Then he waves his hand in dismissal and adds, “Saves me mowing.”

Lee senses George waiting for an explanation, so he offers, “I came across the sand.” As he says it, he realizes it’s not much of an explanation.

“From your place?” George asks.

Lee nods, expecting disbelief, but George says, “Well, better come on over to the house, have some lunch. Fill the belly before you go. Long way back home, long ride ahead of you.” The words long ride resonate but are quickly replaced by thoughts of food.

Lee follows George through the churchyard gate and across the road to the original Varga homestead, where he knows George lives with his sister Anna. As they pass through the trees, he sees a mobile home with a framed porch built onto the side and a carefully tended flower bed in front. The old farmhouse is still standing, but it’s badly weathered and not in use any more. It’s rumoured that George is filthy rich, but you’d never know it from the twenty-year-old pickup truck parked in the yard. Lee takes note of the tow hitch and looks around for a stock trailer, thinking about a ride home, but he doesn’t see one.

George takes him into the porch, which turns out to be a summer kitchen, calling out to Anna that they have a visitor from down south, young Lee Torgeson—remember him, Lester’s boy? “Get the boy something to eat, Anna,” George says. “He’s come all this way on a horse, just like the old days.”

Then Anna speaks to George in Hungarian. It’s intimidating, having her speak without Lee knowing what she’s saying. She could be telling George to get him the hell out, for all he knows. But no, she’s sending him into the trailer and down the hall to the washroom, and when he gets back she’s already got food on the table: bread and cheese and cold meat, pickles and sliced tomatoes. A plate filled with cookies and cake squares.

“Sit, sit,” Anna says in English. “All that way on a horse. You must be hungry.”

“Like the Perry cowboys, eh,” George says to Anna.

Lee isn’t sure what George means, something to do with the legendary ranch, he supposes, how everything was done horseback in those days. Much of the pastureland in the district had been part of the original Perry lease, and there are old black-and-white photographs in the town hall. He shifts his weight on a wooden chair, trying to relieve the pressure on his bruises and saddle burns. His mouth is watering, but he waits until Anna offers him the plate of cheese and cold cuts. When she does, he digs in.

“We ate already,” George says, although he takes a piece of cake in his big farmer’s hand. Lee notices that he’s missing a finger.

“So,” George says, his mouth full of cake, “you’re doing the hundred-mile ride, just like Ivan Dodge. Hundred miles on the same horse. Have to be. No fresh horse for you here.”

Lee is hardly listening. He’s busy making himself the best-looking sandwich he’s ever seen, the kind Astrid used to call a Dagwood.

“You know the story, I suppose,” George says.

Lee looks at him then, and George can tell he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“Lester never told you about that race?” George asks. “Before I was born. The riders changed horses—one of them anyway—right out there where the church is.”

Lee tries to remember, but he doesn’t think he’s heard anything about such a race. He would have remembered a story with horses in it.

So George tells him. Anna knows the story too, and nods throughout the telling. How a cowboy named Ivan Dodge and another hand from the ranch came through the dunes and Ivan Dodge was well ahead of his competitor, and they were supposed to switch to fresh horses but Ivan shook his head when one of his crew led his change horse up and then he loped off on his Arab horse and rode his way to victory. How the other cowboy’s horse tied up and he couldn’t finish the race.

“There was betting that day,” George says. “Not many won money. Only those with horse sense. They say that’s inherited, horse sense. My old man travelled all the way to watch the finish out by your place, by that old buffalo stone. He didn’t like to admit he bet on the wrong horse, but that’s what he did. He had no horse sense.”

“Get the book, George,” Anna says. “Show him the picture.”

Anna takes away Lee’s empty plate and gets him a teacup. “Tea is good on a hot day,” she says. “You wouldn’t think so, but it is.”

For some reason Lee tells her about the Bedouins and their tea ceremony. “They drink it sweet,” Lee says, “and if they’re outside they pour a few drops in the sand. It’s a gift to the desert.” Once he’s said it he feels embarrassed, but Anna looks interested.

“Is that so?” she says. “They sweeten with honey, I suppose.”

George returns with an old album filled to bursting with newspaper clippings, scraps of paper and photographs. He lays it on the table and flips through the pages, some of them falling free of the binding, and searches for something. He holds a magnifying glass over the pages as he looks. He shows Lee pictures of dead people in their burial attire, taken, George says, so their families could remember them. “Most dressed up they’d ever been,” he says, “so good time for a picture.”

“History,” Anna says, indicating the book. “Varga history.”

George points out a photograph of the stone foundation of a building. “The church,” he says. “Soon as my old man got the house done, he started on the church. The house will be gone soon, next big wind, I suppose, but the church is still there. Better building. Or maybe God looks after it, eh.”

As George flips through the scrapbook, Lee imagines the rash of activity that must have gone into building a community from scratch.

George finds what he’s looking for, a newspaper article. He slides the book toward Lee, indicating that he should take the magnifying glass as well.

“His eyes are young, he doesn’t need that,” Anna says, but Lee takes it anyway because the article is faded.

It relates the details of the race: the two cowboys, the hundred-mile horse, said to be an Arab. It is rumoured, the article says, that money exchanged hands, although no man is owning up to either winning or losing, perhaps because of the local women’s well-known disapproval of gambling. The way the article is written reminds Lee of Lester’s old books. He studies the grainy picture of Ivan Dodge, who resembles a movie cowboy with his young good looks, his hat and his fringed chaps. Lee examines the faces of the people standing around him, men in old-fashioned clothing, looking as though they’re dressed for church. He wonders if one of them might be Lester’s father, but none looks familiar. He scans the article until he finds the name of the other cowboy, the one who lost, Henry Merchant. He doesn’t recognize either name, Dodge or Merchant. They’d had their moment of fame, he supposes, and then left the district like so many others.

Anna takes Lee’s empty cup from the table and carries it to the sink.

“George,” she says, “when are you going to get me that dishwasher?”

“Waiting for a sale,” he says. He leans toward Lee conspiratorially and says, “I already got a good dishwasher.”

“What’s he saying there?” Anna asks.

Lee laughs and decides it’s time to go. “Thanks for the lunch,” he says, and pushes himself away from the table. George rises too and Anna comes to see him out the door. He’s thinking that George must have some kind of trailer for hauling animals and is about to ask—not because of the long ride, he’ll say, but because he has work to do—when Anna warns, “You be careful on that horse. Look in the graveyard across the road. Pete Varga. Died when he got bucked off and hit his head on a rock.” Anna shakes her head. “Such a tragedy.”

“Don’t worry,” George says, “he’s not going to get bucked off. Not a horseman like this one.”

Lee says, “I don’t know, fifty miles might be far enough.” He waits for a response, hoping, but hope evaporates when George says, “You ride out, you have to ride back. How else do you get home? Now that you got food in the belly, good to go again. Let that Araby horse set his own pace and you’ll be fine.”

Lee thanks Anna for the lunch and finds himself walking with George back to the churchyard, knowing that there’s no other way, he’ll have to saddle up and ride the remaining fifty miles like Ivan Dodge did, no matter how sore he is, no matter how much it hurts to climb back in the saddle. He can already feel the pain of the horse moving under him once again, the seams of his jeans rubbing once more against raw skin. He badly regrets his decision to ride any farther than Hank’s pasture.

“You didn’t bring no hat?” George asks.

“It was dark when I started,” Lee says.

George is wearing an old felt cowboy hat, battered and darkened around the band with years of sweat and grease. He takes it off, exposing a white forehead and thick grey hair, and hands it to Lee. “You better take this,” he says. “You’ve got enough sunburn on that face for one day.”

Lee doesn’t really want to put George’s dirty old hat on his head, but he takes it anyway because he knows George is right. He tries it on and it fits well enough to stay in place.

“I’ll get it back to you,” Lee says.

“Never mind,” says George. “Time for a new one. You throw that one away when you get home.”

The horse lifts his head and whinnies when George and Lee enter the churchyard. Lee offers the horse another drink and then tacks him up, and when there’s nothing else to do, he mounts once again. The saddle doesn’t feel as bad as he thought it would.

“So where’d you get this horse, anyway?” George asks. “Lester never had no horse like this. Just those heavy horses, eh, good for work.”

Lee tells him. How the horse just wandered into his yard.

“Huh,” George says. “Well, no one claims him, I guess he’ll be yours.”

“I don’t think so,” Lee says. “Someone will come looking for him.”

“Tell you what,” George says. “You ride the whole hundred miles and I’ll give you fifty bucks.”

George holds up his hand and Lee doesn’t know what to do other than shake it.

“All right, then,” George says. “Straight south. That’s the way the Perry cowboys went. Good flatland. Won’t be as hard going as what you’ve come through. Maybe someone will put your picture in the paper, eh.”

“I hope not,” Lee says. He tips his hat to George, and once they’ve crossed the road he lets the horse move into a trot. He doesn’t give the fifty dollars another thought, and he tries not to think of the distance between here and home.

It feels better than he predicted it would to be moving again.

Ed’s Window

Willard is certain that Marian is watching him through the living room window of the house—the window that Willard will always think of as “Ed’s window.” When they were building the house, Ed had gone to the drugstore and bought a magazine that featured an article on the latest in home design. This was completely out of character, but Willard later learned that Ed had marriage in mind and he wanted to build a house that would attract a woman. Although the house was essentially a prefab from the lumberyard in Swift Current, Ed had insisted they replace the standard living room window that came in the package with a larger window that he’d seen in the magazine.

There’d been no end of trouble with Ed’s window. The lumberyard had to special-order and Ed went to the lumberyard every day to see if it was in. He happened to be there when it arrived, broken. Because Ed had helped to unpack the crate, the insurance company tried to use that to renege on its responsibility. The disagreement escalated to include the shipper and its insurance company, and the manufacturer. Ed’s position was that he wasn’t paying a cent for a broken window, no matter whose fault it was. Eventually, there was a settlement, but when the second window arrived, this time intact, the carpenters broke it when they were installing it, and a third window had to be ordered. Again, Ed held to his position, not one red cent, and the lumberyard was forced to order and pay for a third window. This one was installed without incident, but over the entire first year that Ed and Willard lived in the new house, Ed fought with the lumberyard because the window iced up on the inside in the winter, and when the ice melted in the spring, water leaked into the wall and the Gyproc got wet and disintegrated. Ed could probably have fixed the window and re-plastered the wall himself, but it was a matter of principle. And there was some urgency for Ed, because he had plans. The window had to be right before he went looking for his bride, who eventually turned out to be Marian.

To this day, Willard does not know how they met. He only knows that Ed went out all dressed up one day in January—a good month for a new start—and was gone for the better part of a week. Willard was left alone, not really worried because Ed had always done things without telling anyone. Ed said nothing when he got home about where he’d been, but Willard knew that Ed was just dying for him to ask, which was reason enough for Willard not to. Ed made several other forays out into the world that winter and spring, in between rounds of lodging complaints about the window, and in July—once the window was resealed and the wall plaster was sanded and painted—he showed up with Marian and introduced her as his wife. Willard said, Pleased to meet you, and he remembers that Marian said the same, only she sounded genuinely pleased, which was somehow surprising.

Willard looks up from his fence repairs to check for Marian in the window. He can’t really see her. The house is too far away and too dark inside, but just the same, he suspects she’s there. Willard has a makeshift workbench set up on the tailgate of his truck. As he rips the blackened, damaged boards off the fence and measures up for new ones, he wonders where Ed got the idea that a window would tip the scale for a woman considering marriage to him. He tries to remember, when Ed first brought Marian home, whether she was as impressed by the window as Ed thought a woman should be. It’s not as though the window looks out over a green meadow or a pretty little creek. Ed had insisted the window face out over the drive-in lot.

The next time Willard looks up, he sees Marian crossing the yard with a thermos. She’s wearing sturdy shoes and a housedress, and she’s pulled a John Deere cap on over her hair, which she has tied in a ponytail. Willard thinks she looks a little like the young girls in town with their caps and ponytails, only Marian’s hair is mostly grey, and not some wild shade of red, or even blue. He overheard a couple of girls in the grocery store one day, and they were buying Kool-Aid to put in their hair.

He stops work and lays his hammer on the truck’s tailgate.

“You looked hard at it,” Marian says. “I thought you might want some iced tea.”

“I never turn down moisture,” he says.

“There are sandwiches in the fridge,” Marian says. “I imagine you’ll want to have lunch inside, what with the heat. You can come in whenever you’re ready.”

“Another half-hour here ought to do it,” he says.

Marian sets the thermos down on the tailgate, next to the hammer.

“I just heard on the radio that we might get rain later in the week.”

“Too late now,” Willard says. “Anyway, I’ll believe that when it happens.” He looks to the west and there’s not a cloud to be seen. He takes off his work gloves and unscrews the top on the thermos.

Marian turns to walk back to the house.

“Wait,” Willard says.

She stops and looks at him. The anticipation on her face tells him she thinks he might ask her something important.

“I was just wondering,” he says, “what you thought of Ed’s window there, when he brought you to the house that first time.”

“Ed’s window?”

“The picture window,” Willard says, nodding toward it. “Did you think, Now there’s a window right out of a magazine?”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” Marian says.

“He didn’t ever make mention of the window?”

“Not that I can recall.”

Marian looks puzzled. Willard doesn’t know what else to say. He’s sorry he mentioned the window, and Ed. He hasn’t talked to Marian about Ed since they buried him, and even in that difficult time they didn’t say much. Marian had asked him what hymn they should sing at the funeral and Willard had said probably no hymn as Ed was an atheist, but maybe “Amazing Grace” would do. Ed would agree that people were wretched, and if you stretched it, “I was blind but now I see” might refer to Ed’s political enlightenment.

Marian finally says, “Well, it was night, as I recall. And there were no curtains. I looked out and thought, If I’m going to live here, the first thing I will do is make curtains for that window.”

“Hah,” Willard says. “Did you tell Ed that?”

“I don’t remember, but I did go out and buy material and of course he thought that was a waste of money. When I brought the fabric home he said, ‘You’re not going to cover up that window?’ ‘Oh yes I am,’ I said. No woman wants to stand in a window that big, for all the world to see, unless she’s a you-know-what kind of woman.”

Willard feels himself flushing at this reference to a prostitute. He and Marian absolutely don’t talk about things like that.

“But I had a different thought the first time I saw the window in daylight,” Marian says. “I looked out and saw the movie screen and the speakers lined up in the sand, and I thought, If I had one of those speakers in the house I could sit in the window and watch movies every night. Well now I can do that, can’t I, since we updated the sound system.”

That’s true. There’s a radio in the living room and sometimes, when Marian isn’t helping Willard in the concession stand, she tunes it to the movie frequency and pulls a chair up to the window. When Willard sees the lights go out right after the movie starts, he knows Marian is settling in to watch. He’s been curious over the years about which movies she selects. She doesn’t like violence or the horror movies that the kids are so fond of, but she doesn’t seem to like the romances either. She likes musicals, and movies set in other countries, and once she starts watching a movie she commits herself to it. When the movie’s over, she draws the curtains and turns the lights back on.

“Why all this interest in the window?” Marian asks.

Willard says, “Ed put that window in as a special drawing card, when he was looking for a wife.”

Marian starts to laugh, right out loud, in a way that Willard has rarely seen. The only other time that comes to mind was when he put her up on Antoinette and took her for a camel ride around the drive-in lot. She’d laughed like a girl, so hard that Willard thought she might fall off. He figures she enjoyed the camel ride as much as anyone ever had, even young Lee Torgeson.

Marian walks back to the house laughing, and when she gets to the door she turns and waves at Willard. It’s the oddest thing and throws him completely, so he waves back without knowing why they’re waving at each other when neither of them is going anywhere.

He turns to the thermos and unscrews the top, and as he does, he hears ice cubes clinking against the glass liner and just the sound of ice cools him off a degree or two. He takes a swallow, and feels the tart lemon taste, and thinks how lucky he is to have Marian looking after him, and then he puts the thermos down and quickly goes back to work.

It’s the best thing about work, he thinks, how it keeps worry at bay.

Blue Pool

Norval has pretty much spent the morning staring at the walls of his office and when lunch hour arrives he decides to go home and eat with Lila. On his way, he passes the swimming pool. There’s Rachelle in her bikini, perched up on the high chair, protected from the sun by an orange umbrella. An orange cap is the only thing identifying her as a lifeguard, that and the fact that she’s sitting in the chair.

For a hot day, the pool is quiet. Just a few young children in the shallow end and a half-dozen rowdy ten-year-olds lining up to do cannonballs off the diving board. There are two adults swimming laps, one of them a woman with a giant plastic flower on the top of her bathing cap. Both swimmers are wearing goggles, so he can’t tell who they are. The absence of teenagers sprawled on the pool deck likely means they’re all still asleep, as Rachelle would be if she didn’t have this job. Norval would like to march over to the fence and give her a good talking-to about her disappearing act of the night before, but of course he can’t, she’s at work after all. At least she showed up for work.

She hasn’t seen him yet. He stands behind one of the elm trees that line the sidewalk and watches her. She could still see him if she looked his way, but she’s keeping her eye on the boys. Norval notices Vicki Dolson standing in the shade of the change building reading a book. So some of the children in the pool must be hers. He always feels terrible when he sees Vicki. He can well imagine the conversations she and Blaine have in bed at night about options and blame and where to turn next.

A small girl in a bikini gets out of the shallow end of the pool and runs back to Vicki, who unfolds a towel and lays it out for her. The child lies down on her back, as though she’s suntanning, even though Vicki has placed the towel in the shade. They look so ordinary, Vicki and the little girl, that Norval dares to hope maybe the Dolsons will be all right if Blaine can keep working construction.

The blue water looks inviting. Norval wonders if he should perhaps take up swimming for exercise in the summer. He’s been told by his doctor to get on a regular exercise program, and Lila has certainly been after him about fitness. Once in a while he’ll agree to walk with her around the town perimeter in the evening. Lila dresses in an exercise outfit and pumps her arms as she walks, and tries to get Norval to do the same. Normally an intense socializer, Lila is curt when they run into people they know, other couples in exercise wear. They exchange hellos without stopping, in recognition of the fact that they’re all out for earnest walks, and doing something too important to be interrupted.

“This is not relaxing,” Norval has said to Lila about the pace she sets. “It’s causing my blood pressure to rise.”

Lila explains to him about resting and working heart rates. She sounds like the coach of a track team. He wonders how she got to be such an expert on these matters.

But swimming. He used to swim, it’s something he knows how to do.

As he watches from behind the tree, Rachelle gets down from the chair and calls to one of the boys. Norval can tell it’s a Dolson by the way Vicki looks up from her book. Norval thinks Rachelle is about to reprimand the boy for fooling around, but then he sees her demonstrate a swimming stroke with her arms, perhaps the breast stroke (Norval never did master that one), and the boy strikes out across the pool. Rachelle nods approval. Then the boy gets out of the pool and climbs back up to the diving board, the highest one. Four other boys see him and they gather like sharks below the board. The Dolson boy walks to the end of the board, bounces a few times and then jumps, pulling his knees to his chest and hitting the water with a splash. As he comes to the surface, the other boys swim toward him and push him back under. When he comes to the surface again, they push him under once more. Norval is alarmed, but Rachelle is there right away. She blows her whistle and shouts so loud that Norval can hear her from his hiding place.

“You boys,” Rachelle says. “Out of the pool!”

They look at her, and then one by one they swim to the edge and scramble out. Rachelle points to the chain-link fence and they line up. The Dolson boy starts to get out too, but Rachelle says, “Not you. You can stay in.”

Vicki looks up from her book, but then goes back to reading when she sees it’s not her own kids who are in trouble with the lifeguard. Rachelle gives the boys a lecture on dunking, all the while keeping her eye on the children who are still in the pool. The boys by the fence stare at Rachelle, completely infatuated by an older woman in a bikini. They sit down on the cement as she imposes a five-minute time-out.

Nothing has changed since his own childhood, Norval thinks. He decides to make his presence known and he steps out from behind the tree and waves to Rachelle. She waves back, and Norval heads down the sidewalk toward home.

When he gets there, he discovers the house is empty. Lila comes in shortly after, sporting a sleek hairdo.

“Oh, you’re home,” she says, checking herself in the hall mirror. “Thank goodness for Karla Norman. She knows how to do hair, that’s for sure, even if her family is as trashy as they come.” Then she tells Norval there’s a niçoise salad in the fridge.

He announces that he’s going for a swim at the pool, and would Lila mind packing up his lunch, he’ll eat it at work?

She can’t believe it. “You’re going swimming? Today, just like that?”

“The pool is practically empty.”

“Do you even own a swimsuit?” Lila asks.

“I believe I do,” he says.

Norval goes up to the bedroom and rummages in his bureau drawers. He finds a swimsuit, an old-fashioned, eighties-style suit with long legs and bright yellow and pink splotches, reminiscent of the Miami Vice days.

When he carries it downstairs she takes one look and says, “Oh my God, you’re not going to wear that. You’ll humiliate Rachelle from here to next week.”

“I don’t think the style of my suit matters.”

A look crosses Lila’s face. “You’re not doing this on purpose, are you, to punish Rachelle over last night? Because there’s no need. She spent the night at Kristen’s. Everything is fine.”

“I’m not going to punish Rachelle by going swimming,” he says.

“Because that would be childish, Norval, even for you.”

“Even for me? What in the world is that supposed to mean? I just feel like going for a swim. You’re the one who’s always telling me I need exercise.”

Lila hands him an insulated nylon lunch bag and says, “Well, that’s a switch.”

“And I hardly think that I, the hard-working bread-winner of this family, deserve to be called childish. You have no idea what I have to put up with every day, Lila.”

“Okay,” she says. “I’m sorry. Good for you. I commend you, Norval. Just don’t embarrass Rachelle. What are you taking for a towel?”

“What should I take?” Norval asks.

Lila shakes her head and goes to find him a towel. She returns with a proper beach towel. “It doesn’t match your suit,” she says as she hands it to him.

“Is that required?” he asks. “Will it work better if it matches?”

“We don’t own a towel the same colour as that suit,” Lila says. “Thank God.”

Before Norval leaves, she says, “I made arrangements for the wedding party hairstyles this morning. You have to make these arrangements well ahead of time.”

He waits for what he knows is coming.

“I’m counting on you, Norval, to take care of the church business,” Lila says.

“Not to worry,” Norval says. “I will be so invigorated after my swim that I will march over to the church and put God’s House in order.”

By the time he gets back to the pool the Dolsons and the adult swimmers have gone, and he’s amazed to find the pool is empty. He can see Rachelle standing in the shade, leafing through a magazine. She’s pulled a sleeveless orange T-shirt on over her bikini, lifeguard written on the front. Norval goes to the pool entrance and gets out his wallet to pay the girl at the ticket window.

“Slow day, eh,” Norval says to the girl as he hands her a five-dollar bill.

“No kids allowed in the pool at noon,” she says by way of explanation. “And also, you have to get out of the pool if we get a storm. It’s a rule. No one in the water if there’s lightning. You won’t get your money back, just so’s you know.”

The sky is blue, like every other day this summer, and there’s not a cloud in sight.

“I’ll take my chances,” Norval says. “But thanks for the warning.”

When Norval comes out of the change room onto the pool deck, Rachelle looks up from her magazine.

“Holy crap,” she says, staring at his suit. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you think?” Norval asks, dropping his towel on the cement.

“Can you even swim?” Rachelle asks. “Because if you can’t, you have to go in the shallow end. You have to be able to swim two widths to go in the deep end.”

“Believe me,” Norval says. “I can swim.”

He goes to the edge of the pool and wonders if he still can. He thinks about diving in but then changes his mind and lowers himself carefully into the blue water. He doesn’t want his daughter to have to rescue him. She comes to the edge of the pool and watches him. The water is surprisingly cold.

“Don’t watch too closely,” Norval says, treading water and trying to catch his breath. “I’m not an Olympic swimmer or anything like that.”

“That bathing suit is almost ugly enough to be cool,” Rachelle says.

“Tell your mother that.”

“I can’t believe she let you out of the house with it.”

Norval strikes out across the width of the pool with a stroke he used to call the Australian crawl. He wonders if they still call it that. He makes it across, but then he has to stop for a rest. He hangs on to the cement lip, breathing hard.

“Can you make it back?” Rachelle shouts. “Maybe move to the shallow end.”

Norval strikes out again and struggles back to where Rachelle is still standing.

“That wasn’t very impressive, was it,” she says. “We offer a stroke improvement class for seniors. Maybe you should take that.”

“Can I stay in the deep end or not?” Norval asks between gasps.

“I guess so.”

“Go back to your magazine, then.”

“Oh sure,” Rachelle says. “And you’ll drown and it will be my fault.” She climbs up into the chair under the umbrella.

Norval rolls over onto his back and floats. He hears the girl from the ticket window call to Rachelle, but he can’t hear what she’s saying.

Rachelle says, “Wait ’til this guy’s finished. He won’t last long.”

Norval swims a few more laps. He closes his eyes and feels the water on his body, remembers the feeling of buoyancy. He realizes that Lila is probably right, he should do something more to keep himself in shape. He swims back and forth, trying to remember how to breathe properly, and thinks about the strange reality that his irresponsible daughter is at this moment guarding his life. He remembers the time he once saved hers, when he found her hanging from the swing set in the backyard, the string ties on her sweatshirt caught somehow in the chains. He’d got there just in time. She was already turning blue. He’d sawn the swing set into pieces with a hacksaw after that, and taken it to the dump. He can still feel sick at the thought of how close they came to losing her. He felt no satisfaction in the knowledge that he’d saved her life, only terror that he might not have.

The pleasurable in life, he thinks, is never without a flip side. Sadly.

This water, that feels so good.

Vengeance

Lynn’s been angry all morning and anyone with sense is staying out of her way. Angry, as in, If I get my hands on this flirty little bitch Joni, she’ll soon see who she’s up against. All through the lunch-hour rush she’s sharp with Haley and she even has to apologize to the poor girl for making her cry over a broken cup. Lynn herself breaks a plate in the kitchen by slapping it down on the counter so hard it slides right off the other side and onto the ceramic tile floor.

When the restaurant clears and Lynn finally has time to sit by herself at a table and have a bite to eat, she thinks about how, lately, she’s been letting herself go. She was conscientious for years about doing her yoga every night, no matter how tired she was, but for . . . what? six months now? a year? . . . she’s given up on keeping in shape. And the funny thing is, she feels more self-absorbed now that she’s given up than she did when she was trying. When she gets up in the morning and looks in the bathroom mirror she sees lines and wrinkles. When she walks past the full-length mirror in the bedroom she sees a thick body without a waist. When she looks in the mirror in the washroom at the Oasis, she sees hair that is streaked with grey and badly in need of styling. And as she works away at whatever she’s doing, she puts all these glimpses of herself together into a picture of a thoroughly unattractive middle-aged woman who will never again get a compliment on her appearance, unless it’s from another middle-aged woman who understands the meaning of relative. Even her daughters have noticed her declining appearance. The last time Leanne was home, she urged Lynn to join her on a spa weekend. “You look like you need one,” Leanne said. As if someone who owns a restaurant can leave for the weekend, just like that.

Lynn wishes she’d appreciated her looks more when she still had them. She keeps coming back to that little slip of paper in her pocket, and to the thought that Hank hadn’t appreciated her looks when she was young either, because if he had, what had he been doing sleeping with someone else? Is it possible that she’s wasted herself on Hank? If she’d held out that time she left him, might she have done better? Might she have met a man who was positively bowled over by her, who thought she was Helen of Troy? Well, it’s too late for that now.

By the time Lynn finishes her lunch she doesn’t know if she’s depressed or angry, and if she is angry, whether she’s mad at Hank or herself, and if she’s depressed, what she’s depressed about. Not just the slip of paper from Hank’s pocket, because the concern with her loss of looks predates its discovery. Even so, all morning long, every fifteen minutes if she could manage it, she’d gone to the phone and dialled the number on the piece of paper and then hung up. She knows her behaviour is crazy. Maybe she just wants to torment this Joni person for daring to give her husband a phone number, and for daring to be young (she has to be young: the handwriting, the loopy little circle above the i). She can just see her: Joni with her little waist and perky breasts. She hopes she has unattractive calves. Lynn used to have good, well-shaped legs.

She can’t stop herself, she keeps thinking about those years when she was at her most attractive, and they were the same years that Hank was still travelling the amateur rodeo circuit with his buddies. He was no longer a regular weekend warrior and, yes, he stayed home when there was crop to put in, hay to take off, calves to ship, an event to attend with Lynn and the girls. But she knew where his heart was, where he’d rather be if he hadn’t accepted the role of family man. Heaven to Hank was a weekend of rodeo and coming home late on Sunday night to all the benefits of marriage: Lynn’s good cooking, the adoration of his children, clean laundry and, of course, sex. The truth is, she hated those years. She was always tired from being both homemaker and Hank’s hired hand. She worried that he’d get hurt, and then where would they be? Or that he’d cave to the temptation of the rodeo groupies, of which there was no shortage, and she knew what cowboy church was for on Sunday morning. Even after Hank swore off booze and promised that rodeo for him was a good ride and a lot of hanging around the chutes with the other cowboys, the marriage was clouded by suspicion and resentment.

Until that August when Dana was eight years old and got sick with meningitis and almost died. Hank pretty much sat by her bedside until she got better, and after she was well again, Lynn had taken both girls and left for a while, went to her parents’ place. She couldn’t even tell Hank why, what was wrong, what he could do to fix things. When Lynn did go back, not too long before Christmas, she still couldn’t explain what had caused her to leave, but Hank seemed to understand. And Lynn herself had been truly regretful when she walked back into their house and saw the look of relief on his face. Instead of thinking about Hank’s weekend absences and the dalliance that had hung over their marriage for so long, she’d thought what her unhappiness had done to him. For the first time, she recognized that her own dissatisfaction with married life was not entirely Hank’s fault.

And then that same year, both of Hank’s travelling partners got married, one at Christmas and the other in the spring, and although no announcement was made, they all gave up rodeo for good and settled down to being plain old-fashioned mixed farmers with wives and children. Hank bought another quarter-section of cultivated land, and leased another of pasture so he could expand his operation. He loved his girls. Lynn believed that he loved her—that he had never stopped loving her. The night with the rodeo girl faded into a memory in the same league as high school. The threat of another woman never again reared its head.

Until today.

Lynn gathers her lunch plate and coffee cup and takes them to the kitchen, where Haley is pretty much hiding from her.

“Don’t worry,” Lynn says to her. “I’m over it. You can sweep under the tables now. Please.”

Haley grabs the broom and dustpan and hurries for the door, not believing that Lynn is over whatever was bothering her. And as Haley leaves the kitchen, Lynn stares after her, at her tiny waist and her skin-tight jeans, and thinks about how her own daughters are grown up and don’t need her any more, and once again how she’s let herself go. She can just hear the snobby town women like Lila Birch: Lynn Trass has sure let herself go, hasn’t she, too bad, she used to be quite attractive. Women like Lila go to fitness classes in fancy outfits and have treadmills in their basements. Well, who but the banker’s wife and the doctor’s wife have got time and money for that?

Obviously, she’s not over it. She goes once again to the pay phone and dials Joni’s number, lets it ring until a girlish voice says hello, and then she hangs up.

It doesn’t make her feel good to do this. It just makes her feel older, and more depressed about being older. And then this makes her want to dial the number again, and this time the voice says, “Who is this? I can trace the call, you know. If you call again, that’s what I’m going to do.”

Lynn slams the phone down. They can’t trace calls from a pay phone, can they? She thinks about how embarrassing it would be to get caught. But she’s not giving up, she’s not done with young Joni yet. She’s got a cell phone out in the car for emergencies and she’s pretty sure you can’t trace cell phone calls.

She goes to the door of the restaurant and yells to Haley, “I’ll be right back. Everything okay in there?”

“No problem,” says Haley, who thinks Lynn is acting pretty strange today, all these trips to the foyer. She followed her once and peeked through the glass door to see where she was going, and saw that she was dropping a quarter in the pay phone. Now she watches as Lynn goes to her car. She almost expects her to get in and drive away, go on some mysterious errand, but Lynn doesn’t, she gets something from the car and then walks back toward the restaurant, so Haley ducks behind the counter and makes like she’s interested in what’s under the glass. Not gum and candy bars like you might expect, but Hank’s barbed-wire collection. improved 2-point twisted, Haley reads on a card next to one of the samples of wire. Twisted is right, she thinks, and then, I come from a town where people collect barbed wire.

As Lynn comes through the restaurant door, Haley notices that she’s tracking a piece of yellow paper under her shoe, a flyer of some kind, and it drops right next to where Haley is standing, so she bends over and picks it up.

“‘The end is near,’” Haley reads out loud.

“What’s that?” Lynn asks.

“‘The end is near,’” Haley says, holding out the flyer. “That’s what it says.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Lynn says. “Throw it out.”

Haley does. Then she goes to the washroom, and when she comes back she says to Lynn, “Do you think I have too much body fat?”

Lynn just about chokes. “You can’t be serious,” she says.

“I don’t know,” Haley says. “That’s why I’m asking. Those athlete girls—the really competitive ones—have no body fat. They don’t even have periods, I read, because they don’t have any body fat.”

“You’re not fat,” Lynn says in exasperation. She’d like to shoot the girl. Wait thirty years, she thinks, and then you’ll know for sure what body fat is. No periods and a whole lot of body fat. Just you wait.

“Anyway, I guess I’ll go now,” Haley says. “Seth is picking me up. See you tomorrow.”

Lynn watches as Haley goes outside and stands in front of the restaurant, waiting for her ride.

Haley’s replacement is late. Lynn schedules the girls so they overlap by fifteen minutes just to make sure she’s not stuck on her own, especially for the supper hour. She’d better call now and make sure her next girl is coming—she thinks Rosemary is scheduled until closing, an extra-long shift. On second thought, there’s another call she should make first, while she’s alone. She gets out the cell phone and dials Joni’s number, but this time a voice tells her that the number is unavailable. So Joni has her phone turned off. Well, Lynn thinks, that won’t last long since phones are like oxygen to girls these days. She calls Rosemary’s home number and is told by her mother that her boyfriend picked her up half an hour ago. Rosemary’s mother wonders if something has happened.

Lynn assures her that nothing has happened. Kids, she says, they have no sense of time.

Ten minutes later Rosemary walks in the door. “Here I am,” she announces cheerily.

As though the whole world has been waiting for her.

“Call your mother, Rosemary,” Lynn says. “Let her know you’re here.”

Lynn sticks the cell phone in her apron pocket, wondering if she’s going crazy.

Somewhere Else

Shiloh Dolson is standing on the highway with his thumb out. This is a change in plan, but after he’d gone back to the schoolyard for his backpack and then returned to the swimming pool, his mother was gone. He’d checked the parking lot for her car and it wasn’t there. He thought about walking up Main Street again looking for her, but instead he walked to the western edge of Juliet with some vague notion of going to the highway construction site where his father is working.

But cars keep passing him by. He’s about to give up when, finally, a couple in a half-ton stop and a woman opens the passenger door for Shiloh to hop in. He likes the fact that she slides over on the bench seat to make room, and doesn’t expect him to get in the middle, like a kid. He puts his backpack on his knee, noticing that the seat behind them is stuffed with suitcases and boxes. The radio dial is set on the local station, a program called The Trading Post that Shiloh’s mother sometimes listens to. A man named Ernie is trying to sell an old black-and-white television. The picture doesn’t work, he’s saying, but the sound comes in clear as a bell.

“Now who would buy a wrecked black-and-white TV?” the woman asks, looking at Shiloh as if he should know the answer.

He notices that her eye makeup is smeared, as though she might have been crying. She has feathery yellow hair cut all different lengths and Shiloh thinks she looks like a canary.

She says to Shiloh, “What possible use could an old broken-down TV be?”

Shiloh says, “You could put it somewhere you don’t need to watch it, and listen to the sound,” just as Ernie is saying pretty much the same thing. The shop, Ernie suggests, or maybe the garage. “That way,” Ernie says, “a guy can keep up with his programs and still get his work done.” The announcer asks Ernie how much he wants for the TV and Ernie says three dollars or best offer.

“Why doesn’t he just give it away?” the bird woman asks.

“He’s having fun, Janice,” the driver says. “You remember what fun is.”

Shiloh looks at him. He has tattoos on his forearms, like he just got out of the army, or maybe jail.

“Who knows how many calls he’ll get because of that TV,” says the driver, whose name turns out to be Terry. “Keep Ernie busy most of the day.”

“Well, that’s sad,” Janice says. “To think someone could be so lonely.”

“He’s not lonely,” Terry says. “He’s inventive.”

“I hope I’m not going to cry again,” Janice says. “I’m getting tired of doing my eyes.” Then she says to Shiloh, “You’re just a kid. Close your eyes if you don’t want to see crying.”

There it is again. Just a kid.

“I’m not a kid,” Shiloh says, trying to sit taller.

Terry snorts, but he doesn’t say anything.

Shiloh puts his arm across the seat-back behind Janice, the way he’s seen his father do when he’s riding with someone else. He’s careful not to touch her.

“You shouldn’t take a ride with strangers, you know,” Janice says. “Where are you going anyway?”

“There’s a construction site up ahead,” Shiloh says. “I’ve got a job there.”

“I’m not buying that,” Terry says. “You’re too young to work construction.”

Up ahead, the flag girl and her slow sign come into view. Terry whistles at her as they approach and Janice gives him a playful smack on the arm. Shiloh can see his father’s truck parked in the ditch, his father on the packer with his back to them.

“So you want out here, then?” Terry asks.

“No,” Shiloh says. “There’s another site up ahead.” He turns his head away from the packer as they pass slowly, and then he makes a decision that surprises him. He asks, “How far are you two going anyway?” Once he’s asked, it seems as though this had been his plan all along.

“I don’t know if we should tell him,” Janice says to Terry.

“Why not?” Terry asks.

“Well, duh,” Janice says. “We’re on the run in case you didn’t know.”

“We’re not on the fucking run,” Terry says.

“It doesn’t matter to me if you are,” Shiloh says. Then he asks, “How far west?”

“A lot farther west than your construction site,” Terry says.

“Are you going as far as Calgary?” Shiloh persists.

“Is that where the construction is?” Terry asks. “Calgary?”

“I lied,” Shiloh says. “Bible school. I go to summer bible school in Calgary. I was supposed to catch the Greyhound, but I missed it.” He congratulates himself for coming up with this.

“Well, you’re just lucky we came along, then,” Janice says.

“I guess,” Shiloh says, thinking that Janice is about as smart as the canary she resembles. “Anyway, I’ll get a lift to Calgary, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t think so,” Terry says.

“Terry,” Janice says. “The kid’s on his way to bible school.” She turns to Shiloh. “Just ignore him,” she says. She pauses for a minute, then asks, “So, how many brothers and sisters do you have? What’s your mom like? Do you have any pets?”

Shiloh doesn’t answer her. Instead he says, “This radio station is so lame.”

A woman is trying to sell living room furniture. “I have a sofa,” she is saying, “harvest gold, a little old-fashioned but in good condition. And a recliner, slightly worn. And two wingbacks, and a set of drapes, harvest gold also.”

“What are wingbacks?” the announcer asks. “Sounds like ducks. Wingback ducks.”

“Chairs,” the woman says. “They match the sofa set.”

“How come you’re selling all your furniture?” the announcer asks.

“I’ve had the good fortune of winning a little money on the lottery,” the woman says. “My daughter thinks I should give it away to charity. She’s born-again, and she doesn’t believe in gambling and says the only way it’s okay is if I give away the money, but I’ve ordered new furniture. I think I deserve that, even if my daughter doesn’t think so.”

“Maybe that daughter will be at your summer bible school,” Terry says. Then he says to Janice, “The kid’s right. Change the station.”

“Just let me hear how much she’s asking,” Janice says.

“I’d like eight hundred dollars for the works,” the woman says. “It all matches.”

“Way too much,” Janice says. “She’ll never get that for used furniture, especially not if it’s harvest gold.”

She fiddles with the dial but doesn’t find anything to her liking and finally shuts the radio off. “I think it’s great that you’re going to bible school,” she says. “What do you do at bible school anyway?”

“Bible things,” Shiloh says. Then he adds, “We sing. Hymns and junk like that.”

“He’s not going to bible school, Janice,” Terry says.

“Is that true?” she asks Shiloh.

He doesn’t answer.

“Oh,” says Janice. “Well, I guess that doesn’t surprise me. Probably a good thing. Those bible girls are all so dowdy. They don’t wear makeup, you know. God, I just hate to think. You should see me with no makeup.”

Shiloh listens to Janice and thinks she’s like a hard rubber ball bouncing around on a piece of concrete, veering off in whatever direction the surface sends her. He wonders what they’re running away from. The only thing he can think of is the police.

As though she can read his mind, she says, “We’re really in love, you know, me and Terry. His wife and the whole town hate us, but they don’t understand.”

“Janice,” Terry says. “He’s a kid. Stop telling him stuff, for Christ sake.”

There’s a box of Kleenex on the floor at Shiloh’s feet and Janice reaches down for it, and then sits with it on her lap.

“I’m not a kid,” Shiloh says.

“Yes, you are,” Terry says, “and this is as far as your ride goes.” Terry pulls over onto the shoulder and reaches across Janice to open the passenger-side door. “Out you go,” he says. “Running away is serious business. Believe me, you’re not nearly old enough. Wait until you’re our age and then maybe give it a try.”

“You go back home,” Janice says, beginning to sniffle again. “And watch who you get in a car with. If you smell booze, don’t get in.”

“Thanks for nothing,” Shiloh says as he slams the door. “And I hope you get caught.”

Janice and Terry pull back onto the highway and he watches after them until their truck disappears. He doesn’t bother sticking his thumb out again. He doesn’t want to go to Calgary any more, but instead of crossing the highway to go back to Juliet he steps down into the ditch. The hay has been cut, but the round bales are a long way apart because it’s such a dry year. Shiloh walks toward the closest one, and when he gets there he settles down on the north side where he’s hidden from the traffic. He can hear the vehicles passing, cars and farm trucks and semi-trailers, and even a police car with its siren going. He opens his backpack and takes out the bag of cookies. He closes his eyes and eats an Oreo and smells the cut grass and the sage growing along the fence line. A meadowlark sings from a fence post close by. The east and west traffic sounds compete with each other like duelling banjos, and as Shiloh listens, his bad day vanishes. The ditch doesn’t feel like any particular place, and it could be any hour. In the shade of the hay bale, the temperature is neither too hot nor too cold. It’s perfect. As Shiloh nods off, he thinks, I got to somewhere else after all.