Dollybird (14 page)

“Guilt or conscience? They're different you know.”

“Of course.” I didn't know.

“Guilt is what others make you feel. Conscience is your own.”

He jumped back into the wagon and grabbed the reins, ready to whip them over Nelly's broad back. He drove away leaving a heavy space where his words had been.

CHAPTER 21

i
i
i

The next few days
were sultry. The locals said it was unusually hot for the end of April. As far as I could tell, I hadn't experienced a usual season yet. I wondered if normal existed. Ironically, the wind had stopped when we most needed it. The air barely stirred. Hanging laundry, grateful now for even the slightest ripple of a breeze, my every movement was heavy, my swollen feet and ankles lumbering under me almost out of sight, body swaying to its own fat rhythm. In a moment of abandon, I took off my shirt, hanging it on the line alongside the sheets pinned there.

I could only imagine the picture – half naked and heat crazed, feet planted wide, arms outstretched, belly protruding from under a shelf of ever-growing breasts I had to wrangle into a huge bra every morning – and laughed. Casey smiled up from where he played in a small area of shade provided by the tent. The baby gave a tremendous kick to my groin. I winced and cursed small feet impatient to stand on the ground and join the dry, hot dance we struggled through every day.

“Only two or three weeks,” I whispered to it, hardly believing it myself.

Casey suddenly hollered, “Daddy!” and was running to
ward Dillan, who emerged from south of the tent only a few yards away.

He'd seen me, but pretended he hadn't. Turning away, I pulled on my shirt, buttoning it quickly. Dillan went along with the charade, loudly teasing and tickling Casey, making a show of the attention he was not paying me.

“I found a lake over on the next quarter,” he said, coming closer only when I turned back to him. “We could go there and cool off a little.”

“Oh yes, let's. It's so hot out here.” I reached for Casey. “And this poor thing has hardly moved all day.”

“I know who owns it, guy named Gabe. Worked with him on the harvest. But we'll have to be careful he doesn't see us.” He was surprisingly vehement. “You don't have anything to do with him. He's one of them.”

Before I could ask what he was talking about, Casey was squirming out of my arms and pulling at my hand, and we were off. The
lake
was a large slough smelling of earth and water, wet cattails and long reed grasses. The surface was beginning to slime over with green algae encouraged to grow by the heat of the sun. I held back, watching Dillan strip down to his grey underwear. He was a shockingly hairy man, dark spirals whorling around his chest and navel. At ease with his body, he stood as though my watching made no difference to either of us. It was slightly insulting, his being oblivious because pregnancy rendered me less female in his eyes, less interesting or interested. I wondered if he'd have been so quick to undress in front of me if I were not in this current state.

“Well just go ahead and jump right in,” I called, annoyed at the shrill in my voice. “I'll bring Casey.”

He was already far from the edge of the slough, swimming with strong quick strokes, his head bobbing and then, like an otter, disappearing with a quick splash, only to reappear closer to shore. “I'll take him if you want.”

“Maybe for a little while.”

He came to me, dripping, hair plastered to his head. I caught myself peeking at the bulge in his underwear as he strode forward. Embarrassed, I tried to stop, but it seems the more one tries not to look at a thing, the more the eye is drawn to it. It was the dark of night when I was with Evan, and everything had happened so quickly... And Father's convoluted explanations were no better than the one-dimensional pictures displayed at the conference or in my anatomy classes. He'd delivered the information in scientific, even mundane, terms and references. But it was the change in his voice, the clipped and overly analytical, slightly shrill tone that gave him away. He was lying, protecting me from something the rest of the world was privy to. It had to do with men and women and how they behaved with one another, with all the subtleties of growing up.

If he'd only let me in on that part. Perhaps I wouldn't be standing on the edge of a Saskatchewan slough, looking at a near stranger in his underwear, far away from the men I had trusted. Dillan stood as if suspended in the water, a torso with outstretched arms. I jumped a little, laughing an embarrassed laugh, and handed Casey to him.

Glancing around, I undressed to my skivvies and rushed into the water. My bloomers floated up forming white lily pads around my knees, then my middle, and suddenly my belly took on a life of its own. It wanted to float, to reach to the surface of the water and drift like a huge ball pushed by the breeze. As I lay back, my hair rose light and buoyant, fanning out in every direction. I closed my eyes against the sun and relaxed, giving in, floating. The water was dirty, but its coolness refreshing, stripping me of the ugliness of the day. I abandoned myself, forgetting for a moment my aching back, the endless headaches, the shooting leg pains.

I'd been so sure of my choice. The baby would go to a good home and I back to mine, to the life I'd enjoyed – studying, help
ing my father, avoiding my mother. Eventually Evan would return and our reunion would be a vindication. I had no need for the kind of guilt Dillan carried around. If Evan and I had been allowed to love each other, the baby would be ours. That I'd been coerced to make other choices was not my fault; that I couldn't love the baby was not something I could change. My conscience was clear. I wanted to tell Silas as much.

It was amazing he'd broached the topic at all. But in the isolation of the prairies, conversation so quickly became personal. Small talk was like dust, easily blown away by the wind. The prairie insisted words carry meaning, that people ought not waste them. Intimate cares of life, then, seemed reasonable fodder for discussion, a backdrop, really, to the overwhelming demands of the elements. Guilt or conscience. Damn Silas.

The clouds passed overhead, small and wispy, offering little hope of shade or rain, shapes constantly changing in their slow westerly progress toward whatever fate awaited them. I wanted to float like a cloud, destiny determined by wind, a cloud that might become furious and terrible, or dissipate into nothing.

Casey shrieked. Struggling up, I could see Dillan holding the boy out of the water while he screamed and pointed to his leg. The muddy bottom met my toes and I pushed myself toward them, conscious my belly was indeed still with me, its bulk pushing slowly through the water.

“What is it?” I hollered.

“It's a leech.” Dillan was almost as frantic as Casey. “I can't get it off.”

I reached them just as Casey's screaming reached a new pitch. “Hold him now. He has to hold still. There now, Casey, it's all right. See, it's gone.”

The boy held his arms out and, when I took him, buried his face in my shoulder and wet hair. I crooned to him and over Casey's head saw the fear in Dillan's eyes dissipate. Only a leech – no danger really – but a fierceness in Dillan nonetheless. We struggled up the muddy, slippery side of the slough, and I sat Casey down on a flat rock, using my bloomers to wipe blood flowing from a small spot on his calf.

“Let's see now. Just a little mark is all. You didn't let him get much, did you?” I kept my voice low, coaxing the anxiety out of him.

Casey grinned and shook his head.

“I think the ruckus you made scared that thing so much it just pulled its head right out to see what was going on.”

The boy laughed and jumped up, running to Dillan and lifting his leg so his father could see the mark.

Dillan pretended not to see it. “Where did he bite you? I don't see anything.” He kept at it until Casey was giggling uncontrollably. “All right then. You want to go back in?”

Casey's nod was noncommittal. He climbed Dillan's torso as the water deepened, until there was nothing to do but let his feet dangle in the leech's murky home. He examined his legs every few seconds as though vigilance would protect him from something that happened so obviously by chance.

“Hello there.”

A young woman stood only a few feet behind me, already down to her bloomers. She was tiny, short, with fine features and small hands and feet. Large brown eyes dominated her face and her hair hung down in two long braids. She was a beautiful elf.

“I see you've found the swimming hole. Only one for miles around. Was that you screaming? I guess the water must feel cold on a day like today. It's best just to dive right in. It's so-o-o-o refreshing.” And before I could reply, the girl ran into the water and dove under the surface.

“Wait.” I rushed after her until I was in to my knees.

Dillan came out of the reeds at the pond's edge with Casey in his arms and ran straight into the girl coming up for air.

“Hey,” he started. The two stood staring, eyes wide, mouths open in perfect Os. Suddenly they turned to rush away, she swimming back toward me with strong, fast strokes, Dillan pushing hard against the water to disappear again into the reeds. Casey looked past his father's shoulder to the strange woman whose arms furiously wheeled her away. A chuckle rose up from my stomach and exploded into a laugh. The girl came up for air a couple of feet away.

“It's just” – I tried – “the look. On your faces. Oh my.” The girl waited until I could speak again, a small grin on her face. “My name is Moira,” I finally managed.

“Oh I know that.” She smiled broadly, wrung out her braids and coiled them into a bun, neatly tucking the ends in at the top. “Everybody knows who you are.”

“But I've only been here a short while.” It was disconcerting to know strangers were speaking of me. “I've hardly met a soul.”

“That doesn't matter. You're new,” she said, as though that were sufficient explanation. She leaned in close, water dripping from her chin. “I'll share a secret.”

“Oh please.” A comforting warmth spread through my chest.

“They're going to have a sodding bee for the two of you.” She nodded conspiratorially toward where Dillan had disappeared. “You know. To build you a proper house. The whole countryside is saying what a shame it is a young mother with another on the way is living in a tent. They figure your man is too busy trying to farm to think about a house right now.”

“My man?” I looked at her, then toward the pond. “Oh. Dillan. You don't understand. He's not my...”

“It will be wonderful. Everybody comes. And it's a little like Christmas. The women will make things for you, nice things you might need for the house. Or for the baby. You know, blankets, curtains for the windows, things you might not already have.”

We had fetched our clothes from where they lay in the tall grass beyond the water's edge, pulled the dresses over our heads and adjusted wet underclothes.

“They're doing that for me?” It was all a bit dramatic. “But they don't even know me.”

“Doesn't matter. People know how hard it is to make it out here. They want to make it easier. Besides, I think they figure the more families homesteading, the more services we'll get in town. And a sodding's a good excuse for a party.”

“Party?”

“Of course. Later, when the work's done, there'll be music and dancing and food. You wait and see.”

“A real house would be lovely.”

She tied a kerchief around her head. Looking up to the prairie beyond, she muttered under her breath. In the distance a rider sat slouched in his saddle, head tilted to one side.

“Gabe,” she shivered, and motioned around us. “This is his land. It's not a very good piece. He's been telling my father how Walter promised him a better quarter and then gave it to your man last minute.”

“Oh dear.”

Carla shuddered. “Anyway, I have to go, but it was very nice to meet you, Moira.”

“The pleasure's mine.” It sounded so formal. “Wait. What's your name?”

“Carla. Carla Schmidt.”

“Goodbye Carla.” I hated to see her go. I hadn't realized how much I missed the companionship of my sisters.

“Who in the hell was that?” Dillan asked as he emerged from the reeds.

“Carla.”

“Well you could have got rid of her a little quicker. Casey and I've been fighting off the damn leeches while you two went on.”

I laughed and raised my eyebrows. “Well it doesn't seem to bother you any that
I'm
standing right here.”

He blushed and silently handed Casey over, quickly struggling to pull his clothes on over dripping underwear. He took Casey from me and wrapped him in a blanket. I scrambled further up the bank to collect our things. The sun quickly evaporated the water from my skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake. My neck prickled in a peculiar way, and I turned to see Gabe still silhouetted against the sky. The man returned a long look before pulling his horse around. Carla was obviously disturbed by him. And now this business with the land. Maybe that's why Dillan wanted to stay away from him, to avoid a confrontation. I forced myself to wave a little and turned, shivering, to rush back to Dillan. Casey was already asleep in his arms. I ignored the question in Dillan's eyes and began to walk home, back to the tent where the curtain would conceal us from one another again.