CHAPTER 13

Gord picked Allyson up from school that afternoon, after the meeting.

“I want to stop by Ray’s on the way home,” her dad said. “Haven’t seen him a couple days and it’s always good to check in.”

Allyson hadn’t seen Ray since before his cattle had been killed. She had heard her parents say that he had gone into the city to visit his kids a few times. Her mother had driven out to his ranch with some pies for him. He loved her pecan pie.

“He’s had a long face for a while now,” her dad said, as they drove down the highway. “He’s not cracking jokes the way he used to. He lost a part of himself when they took those cows away.”

And to make it worse, Ray still hadn’t heard anything about his cows. They might have BSE after all. Sure, the government was doing their job, but the cows might have been killed for nothing.

“Sometimes you gotta wonder if Ralph Klein is right,” Gord said, his eyes on the highway. “Maybe it would be better if everyone just shot, shovelled and shut up. Then we wouldn’t all be in this mess.”

Allyson looked out the window as they drove. Soon she’d be eligible to get her driver’s license and she’d be able to drive anywhere she wanted.

They drove past the Wray farm and Allyson studied their flock of black-faced sheep.

“Did you know sheep and bison can’t get past the border either?” her dad said, as he caught her looking at the sheep. “The border is shut to everything that could have the same type of disease. It’s like the whole world has gone crazy. Everyone is suffering.”

They reached the end of Ray’s long driveway. Allyson had been here many times when she was a little girl. When Ray’s wife, April, was alive, they’d had a large, scary black dog. April, who smiled just as much as her husband, tried to make Allyson feel better by chaining the dog up to the doghouse whenever Allyson came to visit. She looked for the dog, even though she knew he had been dead for many years. An old tractor rested by the fence, and there was a large planter house in front of the bungalow that read “The Sharps.”

Ray’s golden lab, Cheese, came over to greet them, running up to the truck when they stopped on a bit of gravel near the barn.

“Hey, girl,” Gord said, giving the dog a scratch behind the ears.

Ray’s blue truck was parked near the barn. A couple of abandoned, rusty cars were parked next to it. Why did some people have so much junk at their places? They just seemed to collect crap and let years of hobbies and projects pile up around their home. It was like they were afraid to get rid of anything. She would never be like this when she grew up. She would have a room full of books, but she wouldn’t keep useless junk around.

Allyson got out of the truck and followed her dad up to the house. The blue paint on the outside of the bungalow was weathered. Allyson looked at the drawn, floral curtains in the window as her dad knocked on the door. April had probably bought the curtains before she died and Ray hadn’t bothered to replace them, even though she’d been gone for years.

Gord opened the door and went in, motioning to Allyson to follow. Her mom hated that people just walked into other people’s houses without knocking, but her dad had grown up doing it and had no qualms about it.

“Ray,” Gord called. “It’s Gord. Allyson and I are here.”

Inside Ray’s kitchen, the tap dripped. There were a few coffee-stained mugs in the sink. The red light of the coffee pot glowed, but the kitchen was quiet.

“Maybe he’s watching TV and can’t hear us,” Gord said, taking his boots off at the door. Allyson took her shoes off, too. In the front room, the coffee table was piled high with magazines and catalogues. An old recliner angled itself toward a faded brown love seat while the TV’s big grey eye surveyed the empty room. The grandfather clock in the corner ticked. As she and Gord walked through the room, the clock struck, breaking the eerie silence.

“Ray?” Gord called again.

“I don’t think he’s here,” Allyson said.

“His truck is out front.”

They went back to the kitchen. “I’m just going to check the rest of the house,” Gord said. “You stay here.”

Allyson could tell her father was worried, and didn’t want to state the obvious. Ray was an old man. He could have fallen or passed out. Maybe he’d had a heart attack.

After a few minutes, her dad came back to the kitchen. It was warm in the house. She could feel her armpits starting to get sweaty.

“I wouldn’t think this was so unusual if I hadn’t heard from him for a while,” Gord said. “Usually someone knows where he is. He’s good at letting people know when he goes into the city.”

Her dad opened the door and they walked back outside. Cheese came running up to them.

“I’m just going to check the shop and the barn,” her dad said. “Why don’t you wait in the truck?”

Allyson opened the door and climbed into the truck. From the front seat, she watched her dad walk into the barn. She’d finished her book at lunch and had nothing to read. As she looked out the window, a calico barn cat walked across the yard, meandering in front of the truck. Her dad came out of the barn, ­shaking his head. He walked over to the shop.

The cat sat under a tree in the yard and licked its paws.

The door to the truck opened and her father leaned across the seat. His face was pale.

“I need you to get into the house,” he said.

She didn’t ask questions, just hopped down from the truck and ran across the yard. The dog loped behind her.

Inside the house, Gord walked across the kitchen floor with his muddy boots and grabbed the phone. Allyson stood in the doorway, watching as her dad jabbed at three numbers. He was shaking.

Maybe there had been some kind of gas leak. At school, they had had to take farm safety and they had learned about a kind of gas that killed people immediately. When you saw someone lying down dead, you shouldn’t even bother trying to save them. This gas was so deadly that if you even stopped for a second, the gas would kill you too.

“I need RCMP or ambulance,” her dad said. There was a pause. “He’s dead,” Gord told the other person on the line. “Ray Sharp. I found him in his shop.”

Allyson stood still. Ray was dead. Did he have a heart attack? A stroke? She wanted to cry, but her entire body felt brittle and dry. She couldn’t move; she was frozen by the news.

Her dad listened for a bit, thanked the person on the other line, and then dialled again. He waited for a bit, swore, and then dialled another number.

“Linda,” he said, when she picked up. “I’m at Ray’s place and he’s dead. I need someone to come here and pick up Allyson. We’re inside the house. The RCMP are going to be here right away.”

He listened as she talked, but Allyson couldn’t hear what her aunt was saying. “I can’t answer your questions right now.”

“How did he die?” Allyson asked. “How long has he been dead?”

Her dad took off his coat, draped it over a chair, and sat down. “I don’t know,” he said. He put his head in his hands.

Allyson was clammy and hot. Her dad stood up again and walked over to the coffee pot. “No sense leaving this on,” he said. “No one’s going to be making coffee around here any time soon.”

He turned away from the coffee pot and walked towards her. He leaned over and gave her a big bear hug, and she relaxed into the solidness of him.

After a few minutes, Gord let go and went to sit back down at the table. There was nothing to say. The silence was heavy and awkward, but every time Allyson tried to think of something to talk about, it seemed banal and stupid. One of her grandpa’s best friends was dead.

“How did he die?” she asked again.

Gord shook his head. “Not now.”

The doorknob jiggled and Linda and Craig came into the house. They’d beaten the RCMP.

“It’s so awful,” Linda said, walking over the kitchen floor to give Allyson a hug.

Craig gave a curt nod. “I’m going to stay with you, and Linda is going to take Allyson,” he said.

“Let’s go,” Linda said to Allyson.

As Allyson walked to the car, she felt as though she was watching a movie or floating above her own body, watching everything from far, far away.

Linda moved back towards the door and motioned to Craig. “Call me if you need anything. I can come back if you want, right after I get the girl home.”

Linda and Allyson walked out into the yard. A bird chirped and the sound was eerie; too cheerful for the experience. As they got into Linda’s car, Allyson saw the RCMP car coming up the long driveway. Linda waited until the car reached the yard and parked. Then she drove past the car, waving as they passed.

Growing up on a farm, Allyson had always known about death, but it had never been as present as it was this past year. She’d seen calves die, and sometimes cows dropped dead for no reason. Her family raised cattle and then took them to the slaughterhouse, where they died. But that was different from human death. A few years ago, she hadn’t had anyone close to her die. Now she’d lost both Grandpa Al and Ray. Maybe you let go of your childhood when the people around you started to die. The older you got, the more people would die. That was the price you paid for growing up.

As they drove, Allyson looked out the window. Did her dad know how Ray died? Could he tell? Or did it really matter?

It was a short drive from Ray’s house to their farm, but tonight the drive felt long, the driveway interminable.

“Your mom is still in town,” Linda said, when they pulled into the driveway. “Do you want to come over? I have cookies. Or I can make you some tea.”

Allyson hadn’t been in her aunt’s house for a while. She used to go there all the time, almost every day. But she’d stopped going there when she and Chloe had stopped spending time together. Now Chloe was gone.

“I just want to go home,” she said.

Linda gave her a hug. “Do you want me to come in with you?”

“No, it’s okay,” Allyson said. “I’ll just read or something.”

“Your mom should be home soon. If you want company, just come over.”

Inside the house, Allyson climbed the stairs to her room. She lay down on the bed, grabbed a copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and flipped through the pages. But she couldn’t concentrate on the words. She put the book down, went back downstairs and out the door. Outside, she walked past her grandparents’ house and down to the edge of the pasture. Wind bit at her face, and strands of her long brown hair blew about. She looked at the fields in front of her. Her dad and grandfather had always talked about the beauty of the landscape, how breathtaking everything was and how lucky they all were to live here. But they were wrong. This land was killing them. She could see what was happening to her parents, and what had happened to Ray. How different things could have been if she’d been born somewhere else. What kind of person would she be if she had grown up in Vancouver or even Saskatoon?

She could smell the warm, earthy smell of the cows off in the distance. What was she doing out here? What had just happened? She didn’t want to think about any of it. She trudged back across the yard to her house, and went back upstairs to her bedroom. She lay on her bed and turned on the stereo. Maybe music would help. As she lay down, she realized how exhausted she was and felt her body relax. She fell asleep in her clothes, without bothering to eat supper. In the middle of the night, she woke up and put on her pyjamas, and went to the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth.

She didn’t see her dad in the morning. Her mother said that he had gotten home late, and he was still in bed when Allyson got up for school. At school that day, a few people asked her if she had seen Ray’s body. News travelled fast in the town, and by noon, everyone knew Ray was dead and her father was the one who had found him. She’d blown them all off, saying that she didn’t want to talk about it, saying she’d seen nothing.

At dinner that night, Colton was chatty, talking about how they’d hired a new guy at the auto shop. The guy was clueless and didn’t know what he was doing. But he was the boss’ nephew so they had to train him and help him out and pretend he was competent, even though he would have been fired if he were anyone else. Allyson found herself annoyed by her brother and his candour. She missed Clay. Everything was better with Clay around. He just seemed to have an innate ability to calm everyone down, to soothe the prickly spaces between everyone.

She watched her parents as they chewed. She hated the sound of her family as they ate, hated the workman-like crunch of their jaws, the sound of swallowing. The exhalation and gulping sound her dad made when he finished a glass of milk. They were like barbarians.

Colton stopped talking, and the table was quiet.

As she looked around the table, at the faces of her family, the whole thing felt so wrong. How could they all just be sitting here, eating as though nothing had happened?

“How did Ray die?” she asked.

Donna looked at her, and speared a piece of broccoli. “It’s not appropriate dinner conversation.”

Her father coughed. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

Allyson put down her fork. “Why can’t we talk about it?” she said. “Why do we keep on keeping secrets? I just want to know how he died. What did the RCMP say?”

She looked from her parents, who both stared down at their plates. Colton chewed his macaroni and cheese, looking from one face to another.

“You need to start telling us things,” she said. “I’m not a baby any more. And it’s not that hard for us to find things out. You think you can hide things from me, but you’re kidding yourselves. You can’t pretend everything is fine.” She took a deep breath. “I want to know how Ray died.”

Her dad put down his fork and looked at her. “Well, I guess you want to be adult enough to hear this,” her dad said. “Ray shot himself in the head.”

Donna’s voice was soft. “You never know what is going through someone’s head when they take their own life. It’s always so horrible. Just such a terrible loss.”

Allyson could see the tears starting in her mother’s eyes.

Gord cleared his throat. “The stress of losing his cattle probably did him in.” He scraped his fork across his empty plate. “I don’t have that much else to say about it. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Didn’t sleep much last night,” he said. “I’m going to go out in the yard and go check the cows and then turn in early.”

He stood up, picked up his dishes, and placed them on the counter with a clunk. Allyson watched as he left the room, still trying to process what her father had said.