The Antigonish Review 40

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Moving With The Times

When Dr. Trumble came over they said it was killer gas. He'd heard about it, but never come across it before. The dome, the dome they said, caused it. Not enough ventilation. Nitrous oxides, they said. Never heard of that before. Never heard of anything like that happening before. Hadn't wanted that goddamn dome in the first place.

He felt himself hot all over. Again. Hot, then cold. Like what shock was supposed to be. Those tranquilizers were useless.

And by God, he couldn't sit there anymore. He looked again at his wife. Oblivious to his presence. She didn't need him. There was nothing he could do for her anyway, now.

He wandered aimlessly, tracing, re-tracing his steps; a courtly dance around the farmyard. Quiet now, the poultry in their roosts for the night. The occasional sound from a bird in the trees. The last swallow had long since swooped in under the barn eaves; the pigeons in the loft long since settled.

Getting dark early. Shortening the working day. Farmers don't like short work days. The way things were going here, it soon wouldn't matter. Dark or not. No farms left.

When he'd been a young man, just taken over the farm from his father, everyone called him 'Big John'. He was still tall, his shoulders wide, but hiding their width now, the blades contracted. His hair still thick, a shock of unruly grey.

He ambled down the worn path, past the barn in the direction of the river. The river swollen now, the old bridge long washed out in the last big storm. At the other end of the farm the smaller bridge was still up. Odd how the waters had taken the larger structure and spared the flimsier one. A moral there?

He wondered if it was true, that when death is near, a lifetime is recalled. Relived in the space left between recalling and the last breath. Death had ignored him, flimsy as his life had become and taken instead healthy specimens.

What could he have done to alter the final outcome? They say, people who say they know, that one thing naturally falls on another. That if you disturb one iota of how things are meant to be, the future, then everything else changes. The direction of life.

Rubbish.

But he hadn't meant to have Clara. What if it had been Harriett, what then?

Clara. she used to complain to her dad, old Martin, about how this nervy kid, John Markham, pulled her hair at school. He hadn't done it because he was interested in her, but because he disliked her. He thought he was annoying her. The thought made him feel good. She, it later transpired, felt it was his way of expressing his interest.

When they were older he ignored her totally. So she began running after him. Run after him even when it was obvious to everyone it was Harriet he wanted. He used to go by the Olsen place as often as he could, running errands for his mother. Harriet with her long blond hair, soft as fleece. Her wide smile, the crooked front teeth that made him catch his breath. Something about her. Harriet long gone. Not dead, but living somewhere out West.

No one was surprised of course when little Emily was born a scant five months after their wedding. Not much of a scandal then, anyhow. It happened, happened to most of the young people. Only thing was, it was love or at least a mutual dependence that brought most of them together to begin with.

With him, it had been raw need. His flesh searing him with the savagery of his need. And she was there. Always hanging around. Pretty, yes. And smart too. but a biting tongue and her eyes were cunning, not soft, the way he thought a woman's eyes should be.

Only women were popularly supposed to be endowed with intuition. To hear his mother talk, anyway. But he'd always had a nagging thought of his mistake in succumbing to her. And the years had been scarred by her nagging tongue.

But, he thought, sitting stiffly beside the river; the water taking on a dark blue cast, rippling darkly, nudging the banked sides with gentle slapping slurps of sound soothing his aching head; they'd had Emily, and then the boys.

"Daddy, Daddy! make them stop, Daddy!" Emily upset the first time she'd seen the field cleared to the stand in the middle, heard the terrified squeals of gophers, rabbits, caught.

"Emily, that's life on a farm", he'd said, cradling the damp child in his arms. "They get into the grain. The groundhog holes cripple the cattle, the horses."

She'd tried to understand, lifted her sweet face to his, kissed him wetly.

The next year she'd beaten the stalks, refusing to let them move in with the binder until she was sure all the animals had escaped.

It was all Tim Barker could do, to keep the others from going after the little buggers, they were so used to it. Harvest-time sport. They wouldn't though, with her standing there. Amazon queen. Determined to save the animals. The pests.

Now Emily older than her own mother had been back then. Living with her husband, her boys, in Toronto. When they come in the summer, in the fall, to visit, they're city boys. Don't know any better than to walk behind the binder, spitting out sheaves of wheat, oats, unshirted. Then complain about getting scratched. Hands stung raw from the binder twine, stooking the sheaves. Chests all scratched and red. Then pitching hay the same way. Chaff sticking all over them, and they'd be scratching in a frenzy. Never learn, city kids. But game. Don't complain all that much. And laugh a lot.

Excited, he liked that. Excited about being in the country.

"A dark brown animal, not too big, Gran'pa. Sleek, dripping wet!"
"That'd be a muskrat, Brian."
"Yeah? Hey! A muskrat?"

"Yep. They live in a burrow or a mess of sticks in the bank of a river. You be quiet, lay there on your stomach by the bank, you'll see him dive in the water, swim around. Busy little creatures."

"Hey, cool"

"Turtles too. And snakes ... garter, for the most part." Saying that quickly, because of the reaction. Agitated. He wanting to impress the boys. Have them like the farm. Want to have them come back.

"Snakes, ugh!" Coldly, revulsed. "I like the muskrat better."

Clara muttering at him. Nattering at them to keep their city clothes neat and clean. To stay off the field. Hell, they learned quick enough to sidestep cowpies. Even learned to get up early and gather eggs for their grandmother. Not that she wanted them to. She thought they should act the little gentlemen. Country farmers. Her ideal was to sit around in nice clothes, hire people to do the work.

Tried to persuade him too, years ago. Wanted a place like the Mortons, two farms over. Registered Holsteins. An electrical set-up. That house they had really got her going. She hated theirs. Said it was clumsy. She hated the wood trim, the second-story doors leading outside, leading nowhere. He'd offered to build her a balcony so she could use the doors. She'd snarled, said he didn't understand. True, he hadn't. It was nice, all that stuff she liked. Nice, but you had to have the money.

"We could get a loan!"
"I won't borrow what I don't need! Time enough when I really need the money!"
"God! You're stubborn. With that attitude we'll never get ahead!"

"We're doing fine." His voice calm. Deliberately calm. Hers high-pitched, hysterical. His quiet replies infuriated her. He knew it.

"You're doing just what your father before you did. He learned it from his father. It's called marginal farming!" She spat the words out like a curse.

"Nope, it isn't. We're getting on well."

She snorting. Incoherent with frustration.
"We've got money to spare. Some, anyway, Clara. What is it you're lacking?

No use of course. It was city life she lacked. Second best would be the genteel kind of farming operation she envied. Which he wouldn't be part of. Even if he could. He wouldn't give up the feel of the earth crumbling under his fingers. Why had she pursued him if she'd wanted the city anyhow? A question she never addressed a reply to. But that was all long gone, past. Just that everything was coming back now. Bile in his throat.

For his thirteenth birthday Little John wanted a .22 rifle. Got it for him. Taught him the safety and use of the thing though he'd never had any use for guns himself. Had enough trouble with the nuisance of hunters in the fall.

Lost a good cow once, mistaken for God-knew-what. Found her in the hardwood bush. Stinking, bloated, rump cut through. The hunter, he'd supposed, had wanted something for his trouble.

Hunting on his land. Once, he'd thrown a couple of hunters off and they'd left, mad. But he'd known they would double back and come in again the other side of his bush. A seasonal nuisance. Posting signs was no help. They were there, at it again. Just yesterday heard the crack of a rifle. Trying maybe, for the ducks. Good thing his Pekins stayed around home.

But there was Little John with that rifle. Excited and full of plans for getting rid of all the gophers and a fox that had been into the chickens.

Turned out his first bag had been a robin. The bird just sitting on a fence and Johnny trained the sight on it.

Probably didn't think he'd hit it. Just fooling around. When he'd come out of the drive-shed, there he was. Sitting vacant-eyed, looking down at the pathetic shape in his lap. Just looking at it, fascinated with the power he'd wielded. The gun, discarded, thrown on the dirt and left there. Later, he'd picked it up himself, taken it back up to the house, cleaned and oiled it, put it away. Johny wouldn't even look at it.

"How about I take it, Dad?"
"Soon enough, Robert. You're too young yet."
"Next year?"
"We'll see, Son. Now, how about you go down and mix up the mash for the pigs, eh?"
"Next year, Dad! Next year I'll get the gun and I'm gonna be a great shot! I'll practise on tin cans, eh Dad?"

Tin cans, sure. And groundhogs. A porcupine once. Then later, graduated to game birds. Johnny was the only one who refused to eat them. Emily, by then older, was more practical and she displayed a gourmand's tastes; enjoyed the quail, the partridge.

Even when the kitchen was all fixed up. Professionally. She wouldn't let him do it. Oak cupboards. The old ones ripped out. A double sink. New tile floor. New stove and refrigerator. He still disliked them. But even then she wasn't happy. The idea struck her to spend winter in Toronto, when the kids were older. Said the schools in the area weren't good enough for her kids.

They were his kids too. But he let them go. Robert and Emily adjusted well, even though Emily and Clara always argued. Johnny left one day, hitchhiked back to the farm.

"You need me here, Dad!" Face concentrated in its earnestness, trying to persuade him. He hadn't needed persuading.

"I'll do the cooking, okay, Dad?"

Caught him out, the kid had. Betty Swimmings, he'd hired her on to look after the house, do the cooking for him and Tim Barker. Tim had taken one of the boys' rooms, Betty the other. He'd had to let her go. Felt guilty anyway, about Tim and him taking turns, visiting that bedroom. After all. The room belonged to one of his boys. It seemed somehow wrong.

So Johnny cooked for them. At first nothing but fried chips and pork. But he learned well, and quickly. Turned out a better cook than his mother. Except for the bread. Bread and pastries, he couldn't manage them. But that was all right.

They made out fine, the three of them. It was easier than when he'd been a kid. Everything done by hand, then.

Everything done the hard way. The worst thing was shovelling manure out of the barn, sweat runnelling down his face, his clothing reeking. He and his brother riding the big Clydesdale bareback. Old Emma. Her habit of backfiring.

He fingered the scar running a patch of white skin through his left cheek. He and Gary fighting. Himself getting the better of it until Gary got mean, swung a pitchfork. Hot, searing, the flash of pain lightning across his cheek.

Once, he reflected, he'd known the name of every farmer in the area. Half of them had sold out now. Parcelled off the land. Country houses on decent acreage springing up over the countryside. Fewer fields being tilled every year. And the Conservation Authority buying up land. Developing it for the Province. Recreational facilities taking the place of good farmland. A damn sorry sight. Clara thought they had an offer he couldn't refuse, had nagged him the past month on it.

"You're crazy! You goddamn idiot!"
"It's my land."
"We could have the money! Live in the city!"
"You do live in the city, half the year. What more do you want?"
"You're getting old. Your heart's bad. How long do you think you're going to keep the farm?"
"Until Johnny's ready to take it."
"He won't!"
"Sure he will. He just has to make up his mind."
"Open your eyes, for godsake! None of the young people are staying anymore. Where's the money, the future, in it?

Money was always the big thing with her. Not just to have enough to keep going, be comfortable. Money though, to spend, bank.

For a while he'd tried. thought of developing some of the wooded land behind the back pasturage himself, right in a stand of cedar. Himself and a friend, working spare hours constructing tight little cabins. To rent out to city people. Right beside the turn in the river, where the land was prettiest. Good fishing too. Speckled trout. Cedar shingles. Plenty of white paint and green trim. They weren't fancy, but nice, nice and solid. Advertising had brought a few families out. But after the first few years he'd found them a damn nuisance, decided to stop renting.

Strange how buildings just sort of melted back into the landscape when they weren't used. The kids used them for a while, to play in. Then the birds took over, and the insects, and he didn't see any point using a lot of time and labour, not to mention materials, to keep them in shape. The underbrush drew right up to them, the trees overgrowing the cottages and now, if you didn't know just where to look for them, you could walk right by. Like the places in South America that he'd read about in National Geographic. Abandoned cities built of stone by ancient civilizations. The jungle growing right over everything. Tree roots standing straight in the middle of a building.

God, it was a wonderful farm, his. Three hundred and fifty acres. A fine hard-wood bush, rolling fields. Sturdy old buildings and an arm of the Little Humber intersecting the farm. What more could any man ask?

A crow flew overhead harshly cawing, bringing him closer to the present. He pushed himself up off the bank. Then walked slowly back up the hill, his rolling farmland gentling the landscape in deep shadows.

He stopped at the railroad tracks, smelled the creosote on the ties. Some of them just recently replaced by work crews. Used to worry about the kids, with that train coming through regularly twice a day, every day. Never had enough pennies around to satisfy them, either. Those elongated pennies made them the most popular kids in the school. Giving them out to all their friends. They'd pick them up still hot, vie to see whose were flattest.

Past the tracks, and there was his barn. Huge. Old, even when his Granddad worked the farm. Stone foundation banked on one side. On the other the large drive shed. To the left the hen house, where during the day his chickens wandered aimlessly about, scratching the dirt. Banties too. He'd thought once to breed them for show. Never had the time, but they were nice little things, brightened the yard. His layers, Rhode Island Reds and Longhorns; Barred Rock Capons for meat. Remembered how, as a kid, he'd arm himself with a stick when he carried the empty baskets down in the mornings.

Wicked, his mother called it, when she found out. "Johnny" her voice echoed, "don't you know, you fool child, hens won't lay if you abuse them!"

"What about me?" he whined. "They peck hard, Ma!" Snuffling. "They don't like me, is all!"

Off in the distance he could see his cattle. Dark smudges on a shadowy background. Smaller herd than he used to keep. Mixed breeds. Steers.

There was a sharp nip in the air. Clouds scuttled the sky; stars not yet pricking the sky. The deciduous trees now past their colour. Most of the leaves gone.

Not just the leaves gone, though, Purpose too, was gone. What comes of changing things without knowing what you're doing. Progress. Hand in hand with ignorance. Fool around long enough, upset the balance, things go wrong. Johnny himself, he was the one that thought the big silo should be covered.

"A dome, Dad, that's what we need!"
"Never needed one before. Why now?"
"Gotta move with the times, Dad. You've always complained about the corn getting drenched. This'll solve the problem."
"I don't know. It's expensive too, eh?"

Couldn't refuse that boy anything. Boy! A man, thirty-two. So they'd contracted to get that metal dome top put on. Looked good, a shining gunmetal blue. Sileage, Johnny said, would be high and dry.

Blowing the sileage in the big one, the one with the dome, just as usual. A little later than usual getting the corn in. They'd had a lot of rain. Couldn't get the tractor out to the fields. Thought maybe they'd lose half the corn to rot. But then the weather turned and there they were, filling the silo. Robert coming out to help, taking time off from his job.

Robert gone up the ladder, into the silo. Levelling the sileage at the forty-foot height. Tim Barker, on top the ladder, directing the flow from the chute. First indication something was wrong, when Tim shouted something down at them, the wind taking the words away, scattering them so they only heard - "Robert ... down ..."

Then, nothing. He and Johnny were at the diesel tractor. It had slowed down, the fan stopped venting. Fooled around with it, discovered it was out of fuel. Careless. Still didn't realize there was anything wrong. Wondered suddenly about the quiet, up there.

Johnny climbing the ladder. Yelling something from up top, then going over into the silo. Then nothing. Himself left there, shouting. Couldn't manage the ladder himself, anymore. Yelled for Blair Barker, working over in the barn. He wouldn't go up.

"You bastard! You little bastard! Your father's up there, too! If I could myself, I wouldn't ask you!"

And then, soon after, Clara's eyes like lethal weapons. At first. Later, hollow. Empty.

They sat unspeaking in the parlour, three covered mounds keeping company with them in its immaculate, company-ready state. No one could ever say Clara wasn't house proud. Clever with her hands. Fingers always flying, crocheting those little doily things that covered the surface of every piece of furniture in the room.

It seemed the thing to do somehow, sit there. He'd realized in an abstract way that they were both not quite there, but they'd turned away offers from the Coopers next door to stay with them. Clara had refused to let Millie Cooper comfort her, had pushed the other woman's intent, her encircling compassionate arms away with a flare of passion that had taken the other by surprise. Embarrassed him; the woman meant well.

She sat for once, aphasic. This one time not embroidering his air with mean observations. With her translation of his attempts to foil her wants. How long, he'd wondered, would the catatonia last?

He looked straight at her, observed her sunken flesh, the melting curves that had once enraptured him long vanished into hidden pockets of bone and gristle, evaporating it seemed, in direct proportion to the growth of her spite. And it surprised him somewhat to look this way directly at her. To see how heavily the years sat on her. He wondered when he'd last really looked, for it had long become habit to slide his eyes past her, to fix them on a spot directly above and beyond her own, the void distancing him from her presence, giving him the illusion that she was a nightmare he had to endure, would soon wake from.

A miserable way to live a long life, he now thought sadly. Sad because, instead of the implacable rage he expected to find on her face, there was instead a vulnerable puzzlement and her weakness in their lifelong battle sent a stab of regret through him.

Fault, if it could be designated fairly, he finally admitted, probably existed on both sides.

And he recalled the unexpected heat of her passion, taking him aback at first, rendering him impotent for fear of not living up to her expectations. Then delighting him as he wallowed in it. But that was before their marriage. When she continued to meet his passion with her own after their marriage, even after the kids were born, even while during the day she battled him, he found it repugnant, began to withdraw precipitously, imperative shrivelled in distaste at the thought of her. Gradually a pattern emerged of his own hasty entrance and quick exit. And he knew she was frustrated, took his pleasure in that. Now how long had it been since they'd shared a bed? He'd fought her on a battlefield of lust and won each battle. And the war raged on and this was the culmination; a stalemate of bitterness. And now this emptiness depriving them both of the compassion they needed, to give each other succour in this time of direst need.

"Clara?" he ventured, leaned forward, shifted, lay his hand on the plaided material of her dress. No response. Nothing flickered in those eyes that blazed so readily. It was the sedation. The doctor had tried to get her upstairs, put her to bed, but she'd resisted, insisted on sitting there. He'd finally shooed them all out, said he'd stay with her, was fine himself.

Last week, wasn't it? she'd laughed at him, said contemptuously - what had brought it on he couldn't remember - "he's just going along with you for the time being. It's temporary. He won't spend his life on the farm, like you think."

"Who?" Momentarily confused. wondering later why he'd let himself fall into her trap, given her the satisfaction. "Who, Robert?"

"John!" she said triumphantly. "You know you haven't got Robert anyway. John, that's who!" She brushed aside his snort of derision at her conviction, went on: "You've burdened them both with a lifetime of guilt; sensitive to your enthusiasms, your crazy determination to keep the farm when it's not worth the dirt you stand on. With your dependence on them. And they're afraid to tell you they won't stay, aren't even interested. Afraid to hurt you. Though God knows, I don't know why!"

He'd waved aside her words, irked. Made to leave the kitchen but her words followed him out to the summer kitchen, out the shed door, down the path. "You think Kathleen'll be willing to be a farm wife? Soon as the wedding's over he'll bow out. He's just staying around long enough to try to get you on your feet. Introduce you to modern farming techniques. Once he pays off that new silo installation ... "

Expecting her voice to fade, but she'd followed him, stood in the doorway, shouting at him descending the hill to the barn. "You'll never live to see him take over the farm! Might as well sell it to Tim Barker like he's been asking you. It's his sons who're farmers. Not yours!"

All in the past. Yesterday and yesterday and yesterday. He'd been ready to give up the farm. Same age as his father before him, when he took over. Ready to sign the farm over to Johnny.

Nothing now. Clara sitting up there, alone. With her sons. His sons, too. With the past and all the mistakes they both had made.

Now it was time, almost time. He re-traced his steps, shuffling leaves, their acrid odour bringing back other autumns, his own boyhood. What a pity, what a waste. But still, it was time for him to retire. Nothing would change that, now.

It was the first time since the tracks were laid, since the run began, that No.5251 stopped in its evening run inside the confines of the Markham farm. It had taken about a quarter of a mile for the engineer to finally effect a shuddering, anguished stop at 7:10, right on the dot.

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c. 1980 Rita Rosenfeld
published in The Antigonish Review, Winter 1980