Cool Water (24 page)

Lee knows the empty velvet box is in Astrid and Lester's bedroom closet because he'd put it there himself, with the blankets and photo albums and other possessions, after one of the neighbour women found it when she was helping him with Astrid's clothes. He'd hardly been able to bring himself to touch the box, he'd felt so guilty at seeing it once again. It brought back shame, for the old crime, and for every ungrateful thing he'd ever said or done.

Now, with a different watch in his hand, he thinks again of how it all started with temptation, with his knowing the watch was in Lester's drawer because Astrid had shown it to him one Saturday when he was eight years old and feeling dejected because Lester had lost patience with him. Lester had been trying to repair a combine and he needed Lee's small body to reach into a tight space he himself couldn't get to, which Lee did but he couldn't figure out what he was supposed to do after that, couldn't follow Lester's instructions, and Lester finally said, “You might as well go to the house.”
Go to the house
was the ultimate dismissal. It was what Lester said to the dog when he was getting in the way. All the dogs they ever had were trained to go to the house and lie on the step, banished, at Lester's command.

Astrid, feeling sorry for him, took him up to the bedroom and opened the top drawer of the oak dresser, and withdrew the velvet box. Inside was a man's silver pocket watch on a chain—a fob watch it was called—and Astrid said it came from Norway and had belonged to Lester's grandfather. “That would be your great-great-uncle,” she explained. An impossible number of years for Lee to comprehend. Astrid told him the watch was an heirloom, and that Lester used to worry about who would get the watch, “but now he doesn't worry about that any more,” she told Lee, “because he has you, and someday the watch will be yours.”

Astrid let Lee touch the watch. He asked her if it worked. She said it did, but it was delicate because it was very old, so she didn't want to risk winding it up. Lester, she said, would be upset if he even knew she was showing Lee the watch. After Lee had a good look at it, Astrid put the watch away and they went back downstairs. “Remember,” Astrid said, “that Lester may seem impatient sometimes, but you're like a son to him.”

A month or so later, when Astrid was in town and Lester was in the field, Lee took the watch out of Lester's drawer again. He'd only meant to look at it, but the temptation to see if it worked was too great, and besides, he already thought of the watch as his. He wound it and listened to it tick. Then he wound it some more and it stopped ticking. He tried to unwind it and the winding mechanism came off. Through the bedroom window Lee could see Lester coming into the yard on the tractor and he panicked. He put the blue velvet box back in the drawer and the watch in his pocket and ran downstairs and outside to get his bike.

He rode along the dirt trail into Hank Trass's sandy lease northwest of the farm, climbed through the wire fence and up the first sand hill he came to, and pitched the watch as far out into the sand as he could throw it. Then he ran back down the hill, his shoes filling with sand, and he found a stand of poplar trees that had been covered right up to their leafy branches, so they looked like trees that had been chopped off and stuck back in the sand, and he stayed there all afternoon. When he got home Astrid sent him to his room without supper because he'd been gone so long.

The watch wasn't missed for a year. Then one day Lester took Lee upstairs to show him something and Lee knew it was going to be the watch. When the watch wasn't in the box, Lester called Astrid and Lee was terrified, sure that Astrid would know. But Astrid looked at Lee, and then she told Lester that she'd sent the watch away to be cleaned and it had gotten lost in the mail. She sent Lee to his own room and then she and Lester had a hushed discussion behind their closed bedroom door. Afterwards, Astrid had come to Lee's room and asked him straight out if he had taken the watch. Lee had shaken his head and the watch was never mentioned again.

All through his school years, whenever Lee went up the road and west onto Hank's lease, he couldn't help looking for the watch. He knew the chances of finding it were slim, and he didn't know what he'd do if he did happen to find it, but he believed it was possible that one day he would be walking and there it would be. The sand was constantly changing, after all, covering and uncovering roots and bones and objects discarded by their owners. But he never found it.

Lee slips the rusty old watch in his pocket, throws the reins over the horse's neck, and lifts himself into the saddle. He groans out loud—like an old man, he thinks, but who's to hear—and once again settles into a position that can't in any way be called comfortable. Luckily, the expectation for comfort is long gone.

Although the shade of the coulee is preferable to the heat of high ground, Lee knows the creek will wind and cut back endlessly, adding miles to the journey, so he urges the horse toward the north-facing slope. At the top, he sees a pair of antelope stock-still and staring at him. Up ahead, a fence and a waving field of yellow wheat. The crop confuses him for a minute, and then he realizes that he's ridden far enough south that he's back into cultivated land. To the west he can see a farmyard. He tries to remember who lives there: it's the old Stanish place, he thinks, recently bought by a couple from Ireland. There was a story about them in the local paper, how they couldn't afford to buy land in Ireland so they looked at Canada. They were planning to raise sheep and found the people of Juliet friendly and helpful. Lee looks for signs of sheep but he doesn't see any. In fact, the place looks deserted and run-down.

He watches as the antelope bound away from him and scramble through the fence, down on their knees and up again so fast it's as though they've run right through it. He adds the fence and the farmyard to the map in his head and composes a notation:
The land to the south is marked by fences,
a sure sign that the settlers of the area intended permanence
rather than a nomadic lifestyle.
Then he gets carried away:
A deserted farmyard is a sad reminder of the failed home-
steader, who gave it his best effort and then left again with all
his earthly possessions, mortally wounded by the loneliness of
geographic isolation.

He sees a gate in the wire fence and turns the horse toward it.

Daisy Breaks Something

“When are we going to drop this cake off?” Martin asks. He's still got it on his lap while Vicki drives her old Cutlass up and down the streets and alleys of town looking for Shiloh, and then she gives up in annoyance.

“That boy,” she says. “He has a thing or two to learn.”

“What?” Daisy asks. “What does he have to learn?”

“Many things, Daisy,” Vicki says. “Too numerous to mention. And you'll have to learn them too, unfortunately.”

“Will I be bad like Shiloh?” Daisy asks.

“Shiloh isn't bad,” Vicki says. “All teenagers have things to figure out and it makes them moody. And don't ask me what
moody
means. Ask your father.”

Daisy turns her attention to another topic: they could stop at the Saan Store, she suggests, and look at toys and maybe Shiloh will see the car parked out front. Vicki agrees to this plan before she takes time to think about it, and once the kids have their hearts set on it, she can't back out even though she knows the afternoon is passing. She angle parks on Main Street in front of the Saan, and the kids throw open the car doors before she's barely stopped, and they're into the store and heading straight for the toy section before Vicki can give them the usual warning about don't break anything because she can't afford to pay for it right now. To give some purpose to this stop, Vicki checks the hardware section for blanchers. The clerk—obviously displeased because the kids appear to be treating the toy section like a daycare centre— suggests that Vicki try Robinson's. So Vicki gets the kids to put all the toys back and they cross the street. At Robinson's, the kids do the same thing they did at the Saan. Daisy even asks the clerk for a piece of paper and a pencil so she can write down all the choices for Christmas. The clerk—a teenage girl Vicki doesn't know—tells Daisy it's too early for a Christmas list, Santa hibernates in the summer, doesn't she know that—but she ends up giving Daisy a pencil and a discarded till receipt.

The bell on the glass door of the shop rings and Vicki sees Marian Shoenfeld from the drive-in enter the store. She watches as Marian walks with purpose toward the clothing section and stops in Women's Wear. Now Marian is a woman who would have her beans in the freezer the day they were picked, thinks Vicki. She probably has her whole house in order, top to bottom—or more correctly, Willard's house, she supposes. She sees Marian take a mint green outfit off the rack and hold it up to herself in front of a mirror. It looks like a pantsuit of some kind, slacks and a vest. Curious that Marian is buying a new pantsuit. Maybe she's going to a special event, a wedding or a graduation. She doesn't think Marian is the kind of person who would buy a new outfit without a reason.

Marian takes the green outfit into a change room and Vicki goes back to looking for a blancher. Her eye travels along the row of cake pans and muffin tins, fridge-to-microwave containers, no-stick frying pans, stovetop kettles and cookware sets, colanders and sieves and, finally, canning supplies, and she concludes that Robinson's does not have blanchers. She won't bother asking the clerk; she can tell by looking at the girl that she wouldn't know a blancher if it jumped up and bit her.

She heads back to the toy section, where another young clerk is in the aisle with the kids, giving them instructions as though she's their teacher and they're on a field trip.

“Put one toy back before you look at another,” she instructs. “You wouldn't leave things lying all over at home, so you don't do that here either. And I hope at least one of you is planning to buy something.”

Normally this would make Vicki mad but right now she doesn't have time to be snippy with the girl. She tells the kids to put the toys back where they found them, which they do without arguing.

“Okay,” she says. “One more place to look and then we have to head home.” She herds them out the door and then down the block for one last stop at Jackson's Hardware. She decides that if Shiloh hasn't found them by the time they're done there she'll drive home without him and let Blaine deal with him later. It wouldn't hurt Shiloh to stew for a while anyway, although she doesn't imagine being left behind will teach him much. It will just give him another reason to be irritated with her. Well, at least she can use his disappearance as an excuse for her extended stay in town.

As they enter the hardware store, old George Varga from up north is just leaving, positioning what looks like a new hat on his head. He holds the door for Vicki and the kids, and as soon as they're inside the kids head for the back. There aren't any small toys here, but there are plenty of tricycles, bicycles and other riding toys, and a bright red plastic wagon that the twins have their eyes on. The store is air-conditioned, and Vicki feels the relief from the heat outside. Mrs. Jackson, a middle-aged woman (who dresses very well for a day of standing behind the till in a hardware store, Vicki thinks) is admiring her newly manicured fingernails. Vicki guesses that she's had them done at the new place in Swift Current, called Pretty Pinkies. The young girls get wild patterns and rhinestones, but Mrs. Jackson's nails are just plain red.

She asks Mrs. Jackson if she has blanchers in stock.

Vicki sees Mrs. Jackson's eyes leave her new nails and dart around the store trying to fix on the kids. Why does this happen everywhere they go? Vicki wonders. Her kids are not bad. They don't steal. There are a lot of them, but what's wrong with that? She and Blaine are keeping the numbers up in the Juliet school. The twins will be a bonus in the fall, a double addition to the kindergarten class. She and Blaine should be thanked for having so many kids.

“I'm sorry, Vicki,” she says, “they're all gone. I didn't bring many in from the warehouse this year because of nobody having any garden. My own garden went to the grasshoppers. They just devoured it. I'm especially sorry not to have any green beans.”

Vicki considers telling her she knows where she can get some, but says instead, “I just happened to be in town today, you know, and thought I would pick up a blancher.”

Mrs. Jackson says she can have one in for her by tomorrow afternoon, and Vicki is about to say that will be too late— even now she's going to need ten stoves and forty blanchers to get the beans done before Blaine gets home—when a loud crash comes from the back of the store, and a child starts to howl at full volume.

“Mom,” Martin shouts, “Daisy's broken something.”

Vicki assumes that means a limb. Mrs. Jackson assumes it means a piece of merchandise. They're both right. Daisy had been climbing up and down the cans in a pyramid-shaped display of barn paint. She fell from the fourth row and landed on her wrist. The cans luckily fell the other way, but one of the lids came off and paint is now spilling out in a widening pool of deep red. The paint has already run under a refrigerator and an apartment-sized clothes dryer by the time the two women get to the back of the store. Vicki's first thought is that the paint is the same colour as Mrs. Jackson's new fingernails, even as Daisy is screaming loudly enough for the whole town to hear. Vicki tries to examine Daisy's arm, but Daisy won't let her touch it. Mrs. Jackson grabs a package of paper towels off the shelf and tries, unsuccessfully, to stop the paint spill from spreading. The other four kids stand in a row and watch, their eyes wide.

“You're in trouble now, Daisy,” says Martin. “The lady has paint on her trousers.”