CHAPTER 10

The town’s Stampede parade was held two days after grad. The night before the parade, Gord asked Clay if he was willing to move back to the farm for the summer.

“I could really use your help,” Gord said. Donna, Gord and Clay were sitting in the family room. Gord leaned back in his La-Z-Boy, waiting for his son’s response, showing the same kind of nerves and anticipation of a romantic lead asking a lady on a date.

Donna sat beside Clay on the couch. The TV was on, but no one was watching it.

“I can’t,” Clay said. “I have things to do in the city.”

He’d gotten a good job at the university farm for the summer, helping out with dairy experiments.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Clay said. “But it’s about the money. You can’t pay me, can you? I need that money for school.”

Gord stared at his hands.

“You can’t afford it, can you?”

Gord shook his head. “We’re not doing so hot,” he ­mumbled.

“I wish I could help you. But the money I can make in the city is just too good for me to pass up right now,” Clay said. He walked over to stand next to his father. “It’s not your fault. I don’t blame you.”

Gord looked so small and broken next to Clay. Was Clay still growing? Could you get taller in your mid-twenties? Was Gord already starting to wither and fade? Donna was afraid and she wasn’t sure why. Gord reached for the remote and turned the TV on, ending the conversation. Clay left the room without saying anything. Gord started flicking through channels, and his eyes started to glaze over. Donna hated it when people skipped channels, but she said nothing. The stress was getting to Gord. He was trying to run the farm without Al and Abby, and dealing with the financial pressure, what he would do next and where the money would come from. The family hoped Abby would return to her regular self and magically appear as the ­person she had been before the accident, but this was not happening. She just wanted to stay in her room and stare out the window. Gord had taken to walking the fields, studying the cows. For the millionth time, Donna wished she was a better farm wife and could help. At least school was out and Linda would be around more. Colton hadn’t been much help lately. He was getting more hours at the auto shop, which was good. He had barely been at home. Donna suspected he was shacking up with Lily. She needed to talk to Gord about giving Colton the boot, since he wasn’t contributing to the house at all. He just came through the house like a tornado, making messes and scavenging through the fridge. He was old enough to move out. Clay had been out of the house by the time he was nineteen. Colton was now almost as old as she was when she’d gotten pregnant with Clay. Donna would have to talk to Gord before she told Colton he had to leave, and she wasn’t ready to have that conversation.

Gord flipped past a cooking show and some music videos before landing on Paul Newman’s face.

“Ooh, Hud,” Donna exclaimed. The enthusiasm in her voice made Gord stop changing channels. They watched a few minutes of the movie. Then Donna remembered Hud’s plotline. It wasn’t just about hunky Paul Newman and his white undershirt. It was a movie about cattle, specifically about the death of cattle and the fall of a patriarch. In one of the movie’s most disturbing scenes, the rancher, after killing his cattle because they were sick with hoof and mouth disease, crawled along a gravel road through dust and dirt.

“We don’t have to watch this,” she said. “You can change the channel.”

“But you love Paul Newman,” Gord said, without looking at her.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Change the channel.”

Pam would be arriving tomorrow to attend Stampede. She hadn’t been for a visit for a while and said she wanted to come by and see everyone. Donna suspected that she wanted to see how everyone was doing.

“If money’s tight,” Pam said, during their weekly phone call. “You don’t even have to ask. I’ll help you out in any way I can.”

“No,” Donna said. “We can’t take anything from you. Don’t mention it again.”

But money was tight. A couple days before grad, she’d come downstairs to see Gord, who had never worked off the farm in the entire time she had known him, looking through the classified ads in the newspaper. He sat at the kitchen table, hunched over the paper, his movements furtive as if he was afraid someone was going to catch him. Donna suggested that he ask Craig if anyone needed help with carpentry work, but Gord shook his head.

“I can’t go piggy-backing on Craig,” he said.

“So what are you going to do?” she asked.

“I’m looking at patch jobs,” he said. “Maybe there’s something there. Maybe one of the guys knows of something. I’ll have to ask. But I thought it would be easier to go to the papers first.”

He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. It stuck straight up on his head. He touched the stubble on his chin.

“I’m not sure what I can do,” he said. “Would an employer hire some old guy like me when they can hire some kid?”

He looked down. “I’m not even sure how that would work anyway. How could I go to work when I have to do things around the farm?”

“What about trucking?” Donna asked. “Craig’s done it. Didn’t Phil Hill do it?”

Gord leaned over the table, propping his head up as if it was too heavy to lift. “The thing is, Donna, the trucking industry is hurting too. The cattle business is slowing everything down. There probably aren’t any trucking jobs.”

The border closure was affecting everyone differently. The Hills had sold some of their cattle during the drought last year, so they had fewer cattle and were doing okay. Because prices were so low and the markets weren’t moving fast, a lot of people were planning on keeping their cattle instead of selling them. They had no way to get any money. The government still hadn’t figured out any sort of aid package. Everyone was still waiting.

“This whole thing is a mess,” Gord said. “The only time I really feel okay is when I’m out in the yard with the cows. I just put my head down, do what I’m supposed to do, and forget about all this nonsense.”

After Gord went to bed that night, Donna confronted Clay in his bedroom.

“I’m worried about your dad,” she confided, whispering so Gord couldn’t hear. She closed Clay’s bedroom behind her, and the door to the master bedroom was closed but she was still paranoid.

“I know,” Clay said. “I wish I could come home and help,” he said. “But Dad can’t give me any money and my summer job is a really good opportunity. And I don’t want to lose my place. Arjun would never be able to find a roommate on such short notice.”

She looked at her son. She wished he could stay home too. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “But can you just come and visit more? Help out? Relieve some of the stress?”

Clay nodded. He stood up from his bed, where he had been sitting, playing solitaire on his laptop.

“I’ll try to do what I can,” Clay said. “It’ll be okay, Mom.”

He stood up and gave her a hug. She let him. When had he become the one to reassure her? And even though he said that everything would be okay, she strongly suspected that it wouldn’t. They’d been treading water for months now. Thank God they’d made it through winter to the summer. Things could only get better.

*

Donna hoped the parade would help everyone forget about what they were going through, at least momentarily. Clay, Allyson, Craig, Linda and Gord were all downtown for the parade. Chloe and Colton had been called to work. A group of ranchers had a big float to remind everyone to keep eating beef and support the local cattle industry, even though the border was closed. The men dressed up in full cowboy gear. Some of them were on horseback, while others would sit on the float that Phil Hill and his wife Marian had built out on their farm. The float featured a big barbecue, with the slogans “Eat Alberta Beef”, “We Love Beef” and “Save our Ranchers” all over the sides. Allyson was on a float with the other school band members who weren’t lucky enough to leave town for summer ­holidays.

Memorable Moments would be busy, because everyone would be hanging out on Main Street during the parade.

When she arrived at Memorable Moments, Donna gave the floor a sweep before opening the front doors. The store was packed with people browsing cards and stationery. No one was buying much. Anita had noticed that a while ago, and mentioned it to Donna almost apologetically.

“It’s the whole cattle business,” she said. “Everything is slower. Even Kelly’s silhouettes aren’t selling at the same rate. People are feeling the pinch.”

As the parade got ready to start, families lined the streets with their lawn chairs, the little ones dressed in cowboy gear. It was hard for Donna not to feel a little cheerier when she looked at their smiling, excited faces. The kids were ready to dive into the street and pick up candy as people threw it from their parade floats. The whole town went crazy for Stampede. Businesses decorated their offices to look western, and the whole town, even people who had never been on a ranch, brought out their cowboy hats, belt buckles and tight jeans. It was a good time. Donna always liked going to the rodeo. She knew bull riding was stupid and dangerous, and every time she watched it, she thanked her lucky stars that none of the men in her family had ever thought to take it up. But when she was watching it, as she and Pam were going to do that evening, she always felt a thrill of excitement and an almost sexual feeling as the sweating mass of the bull bucked and thrashed and the handsome cowboy on his back held on for dear life. Even though she was glad Gord had never taken up rodeo, she definitely understood the attraction.

It would be good to hang out with Pam tonight. They’d take in the rodeo, watch the chuckwagons, drink in the beer tent, and maybe dance a little. She could take her mind off her troubles for a while. It would do her good to cut loose.

The crowd inside the store filed out as it got closer to 11 o’clock. The parade wouldn’t start on time. Nothing ever started on time here. This was a “last-minute town” with people always running late, falling behind and making plans at the last minute.

Eventually, she heard drums off in the distance, and the sound of an air horn signalling the parade was underway. Her kids always loved the town parades when they were little. They’d begged to go to the spring parade in the village next to the town. The village was so small that they just ran the same parade around the village twice so the whole event would last longer. The first time Donna saw this happen, she wondered what sort of hick place she had moved to.

She propped the door open to Memorable Moments and stood inside, watching. No one would come into the store while the parade was on. Several RCMP members rode by on their black horses, followed by Barb McGuinty sitting in the car waving at everyone while Faye and several city workers threw candy out into the crowd. The Elks Hall members followed behind. All the older gentlemen sat on a float, wearing funny hats and waving. Cars drove by, and colourful floats filled with smiling and waving people drove down the street. It was amazing how the town could go so western in one week. Even people who had never been near a cow or a horse in their life were able to pull out some western wear. She’d been one of those people when she moved here. She’d always dreamed of the romance of cowboys, watching The Good, the Bad and The Ugly and John Wayne movies. Listening to Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers and Conway Twitty. Then she married a cowboy and moved to small-town Alberta and realized the cowboy dream was created by Hollywood and the reality of it all was a hell of a lot different.

Children squealed as they swooped in to grab the candy thrown from the floats and she smiled.

Her husband and his brother rode by on their horses. As Gord passed, he waved at Donna, winking and smiling as he tipped his hat in her direction. She hadn’t seen him smile like that in a while. She watched as he passed by, his horse Temple’s head held high. Gord loved that horse so much. He was in his element now. He always looked different, stronger somehow when he was doing something with the cattle or the horses.

“Hey, hot stuff,” she heard. Mary Anne came to stand beside her, and started catcalling at the ranchers. Gord saw her and laughed as they passed by. He needed moments to just celebrate who he was, distracting him from having to think about the ranch, and the money, and everything else.

The float passed by. Clay, Doug Miller and some other ranchers stood on it, waving. Clay wore his best western garb, with boots, a hat and some chaps over his jeans. Linda stood on the float too, wearing an apron that said, “Eat Alberta Beef”, waving with one hand and throwing candies out of a bucket with the other. Clay walked over to his aunt, reached deep into her bucket and pulled out fistfuls of candy, which he threw to small children lining the sides of the road. He caught Donna’s eye and threw a couple candies in her direction. Mary Anne whooped and waved at him. Donna found herself smiling. The weekend would do the entire family good. They would go out to watch the rodeo, and there would be drinking and dancing and maybe she and Gord would even have sex. And she’d get to spend some time with Pam for the first time in months. She used to go visit Pam several times a year, but she hadn’t left the farm since Al’s accident. As the float passed by, she hoped for a minute that the parade would go past the lodge. Abby had always loved Stampede. Two years ago, Abby would have been on that float herself, laughing, waving and smiling at everyone. Donna felt a pang of guilt. She hadn’t been to visit Abby in a while. It was hard to go see her because she didn’t seem to want to talk. Donna would try to keep up a steady stream of chatter and ask Abby questions she wouldn’t answer. Whenever she went to visit, the two of them just ended up watching television. Donna had stopped bringing knitting. The last time she’d brought it, Abby had tried to help her and got frustrated because she couldn’t make her good hand work well enough to help out. That had put a stop to that.

“Good crowd,” Mary Anne said. “Should be a good night at the rodeo.”

“Maybe you’ll get some story ideas,” Donna said.

“I’ve already got a few notes for my next book,” Mary Anne said, patting her large purple purse. “But watching the rodeo always fires up the old imagination. What time is Pam coming in?”

“Said she’d be here at five,” Donna said.

“Why don’t we cab it from my place?” Mary Anne said. “You two can stay over. Have a girl’s night.”

“God, do I ever need that,” Donna said.

Mary Anne squeezed her shoulder. “What you really need is a trip to the spa or a ladies’ weekend away.”

How she wished she had the money to go away. That couldn’t happen now. But tonight Donna would drink with her friend and her sister and watch cowboys.

She heard the sound of the school band and looked for her girl. She spotted her on the back row on the float. She watched as her daughter passed by, her face mostly obscured by the shining golden bell of her trumpet.

There was something about the sunny day, and the parade, and her friend and the crowd and the energy of it all that made Donna feel calmer. Maybe the Klassens were past the worst of it. Maybe things would get better now, and the border would open soon. They’d made it through tough times before. It had been over a year. She was going to try to live in the moment and concentrate on what was happening in front of her. As trick riders trotted by on their horses, they whooped loud “Yee haws!” at the crowd. Donna raised her arms and whooped back.

*

During Stampede week, a couple days after the parade, the Alberta Beef Producers and the town decided to have a barbecue and a rally to support the local cattle ranchers. During the past year, many of the farmers had been to the Legislature in Edmonton to stand in front of the big building, asking government officials to deliver them an aid package. People were going broke, trying to make money any way they could. Some of the men were looking for extra jobs, and some were selling meat to the people in town or in Edmonton, Calgary or Lloydminster, slaughtering up their cattle and selling their meat to anyone who would buy it. They were doing anything they could to make a buck.

Every business in town had posted signs for the barbecue and The Messenger had run stories about it. Gord had met with other cattlemen earlier that weekend to organize the event. Donna had made her famous potato salad and baked beans to serve alongside all the beef they planned to sell. She was glad to clear some of the beef out of her freezer and hoped they’d be able to sell it all. Lord knows they needed the money.

Earlier that week, Allyson asked if they could have chicken. They’d been eating so much beef the past year. Ground beef, roast beef, steaks, tenderloin. If there was a beef recipe in her house, Donna had used it in the year since the border closed. Gord had taken cull cows to the slaughterhouse because he had to get rid of them. The cows that he normally would have sold at the auction were on the farm, costing him money.

“We’re bleeding money right now,” Gord said to her as they lay in bed together one night. A few months ago, Donna had picked up another job doing baking for Carmen Wilson, who owned a catering company in town. The extra money Donna was pulling in made her feel good. But it still wasn’t enough.

They needed to kick Colton out. He was an adult after all. He had a job and was earning his own money.

The day of the barbeque, the ranchers drove their trucks up Main Street and parked in front of the museum. Donna watched out the window of Memorable Moments as the trucks streamed by. Bonnie and Anita would handle the store and Anita had given her a couple hours off so she could go help out.

“How are you holding up?” Anita asked. “Everything okay?”

Donna felt her cheeks redden. If she started talking, she’d probably tell Anita too much. Tell her how stressed she really was, how her family was hanging on by a thread. She had been very careful not to talk about the things that were happening at home. If you talked about your troubles in town, everyone would know all about it in a few minutes. There were many things she never mentioned, like how hard it was for her to live on the farm, and how some days, she wished she were somewhere else.

“I’m okay,” she said. “Just carrying on like usual.” She paused, thinking how to broach the question. “Do you think I could pick up more shifts this summer?”

Anita shook her head. “Sorry, business is slow. But Kelly might need help for craft shows. Maybe he can use someone at the booth.”

It would be tough for Donna to juggle the booth, catering and the store, but she was willing to try. She looked out the window and watched as Doug Miller’s dirty white truck drove up the street.

“I’d appreciate it,” she said.

“You better hurry and get out there,” Anita said. “Go sell that beef.”

Main Street was packed. When she got to the museum, she saw Gord, Craig and Linda and many other cattle ranchers and their wives. Doug Miller and his wife Norma were there, along with Tony Smith and Mary, Marty Valleau, the Hills and Don Salmon and his wife Wendy.

A large banner strung across the door of the museum read, “Save our ranchers.” Balloons and ribbons decorated the ends of the banner.

“Here, Donna, we saved one for you,” Linda said, pushing an apron into her hand. Linda was wearing an “I love Alberta beef” t-shirt and a cowboy hat. Donna regretted that she’d left her cowboy hat at home.

“Just let me go to the bathroom first,” she said to Linda, starting towards the museum. She hadn’t been there in months. Town residents mostly ended up taking out-of-towners to the museum. The museum specialized in town history and oddities. There was a collection of salt and pepper shakers that Mabel Jacobson had donated after her mother died. Patrick Stevens’ shoes were displayed in a glass case. He’d been struck by lightning and died. There were displays cases filled with pioneer ­farming tools and pictures of past Mustangs hockey team members who had gone on to play in the western hockey leagues. Other displays cases and rooms were filled with photographs of people who had gone on to do great things, like Scott Morris, the chuckwagon champion who had grown up in town. The museum’s pride and joy, a five-legged squirrel, sat in a dusty room full of taxidermied animals. The squirrel held a peanut in one of his arms while his demonic yellow glass eyes stared at nothing. There was no charge to go into the museum and the kids always wanted to go when they were smaller. When he was young, Clay had been obsessed with the squirrel. Pam, who had been to the museum on several occasions, made fun of it. It pissed Donna off when she made fun of things in town. It was one thing when Donna criticized stuff in her head, but it was another thing entirely when people who didn’t live in town made fun of things.

Donna pushed open the heavy museum doors, stopping in the entryway of the museum to check out the paperback ­bookshelf. You could donate your old paperbacks to the museum and buy new ones for a dollar. Donna spotted a few Stephen King books and a copy of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible in the stacks and picked them up.

Mabel Jacobson sat at the volunteer desk where Donna had to pay. Mabel volunteered for so many things that Donna wondered when she found time to sleep. Maybe that was what you did when you were a widow and your kids moved away. You had to keep busy.

“Thanks, dear,” Mabel said, taking Donna’s coins from her hands.

Donna went into the bathroom to pee. Inside the stall, she changed into the Alberta Beef t-shirt, folding her other shirt and putting it in her bag. When she came back out, she studied herself in the mirror. She was starting to look squishy around the middle. She shouldn’t be so hard on Gord for his gut. She was no spring chicken either. When Donna had turned forty a few years ago, Abby told her the alternative to getting older was dying, so no one should ever complain about aging. Donna washed her hands and dried them before going outside.

Phil Hill, who was on the board of the Alberta Beef Producers, was spreading out “Eat Alberta Beef” stickers, “I love Alberta Beef” bumper stickers and pencils on tables. He gave Donna a smile as she approached.

“At one of the last meetings, we were talking about how we worried that people were going to stop eating beef because they were worried about BSE,” said Phil to Donna. “But they haven’t stopped. In fact, people have been buying more.”

He squeezed Donna’s shoulder in a friendly, familiar way. She’d always liked Phil. He was a good man, steady and strong, the type that came to mind when someone said the phrase “good old country boy.”

A crowd of people gathered in front of the tables, waiting for the signal to start buying hamburgers and beef on a bun. The ranchers also had coolers of meat for sale. Donna could smell the rich scent of meat as the smoke from the barbecue drifted over the crowd. She stood behind the table as Linda showed her the price list and the cash box. Then the crowd was ready, lined up to buy. The crowd kept the crew busy and the guys talked and laughed as they cooked the meat, served up coleslaw, beans and potato salad, coffee and pop to their customers. All the local businesses had donated goods to help out. Everyone knew how much the ranchers were suffering.

When the crowd had dispersed for a bit and she was taking a breather, Linda sneaked over to talk to her.

“Ray Sharp’s not here,” she said. “Craig said no one’s heard from him today. I’m kind of worried. Maybe someone should go check on him.”

“I’ll tell Gord to do that on the way home,” Donna said. “Ray’s not the type to just disappear. If he was sick, he would have called someone.”

Linda held onto Donna’s arm. Donna hated it when she did this, because she held on so tight that it felt like a pinch.

People had started lining up again and so she broke away from Linda and began smiling and taking people’s money. Barb McGuinty made a speech honouring the cattle ranchers, and how it was so important that everyone had showed up to support them and buy their meat. By the end of the day, the ranchers and their families had emptied their coolers of meat. Donna put her hand on a stack of ten-dollar bills in the float. They would all have some money to take home. Every little bit helped.

*

Later that evening, Donna sat at the kitchen table, the copy of The Poisonwood Bible in front of her. She didn’t feel like cooking supper. The family could fend for themselves. She thought about all the townspeople who had shown up to the barbecue and meat sale. So many people had come out, smiling, offering their support, telling the ranchers that they were doing a noble job. She smiled at and thanked so many people, many of whom she had never seen before. It was enough to make a person feel teary. Sometimes it was surprising to realize how much people really did care.

She heard the sound of the door slam and knew by the sounds that it was her husband. He grunted as he removed his boots and then came up the stairs.

“I got some bad news,” he said, slumping down at the table. “They found BSE in one of the cows in Ray’s herd.”