She
had always been different. Even as an emerging adult she had scorned
polite society and its conventions that were of no discernible value to
her. In adulthood she had distanced herself from her family,
townspeople in their rural community who paid obeisance to values that
she knew were a shield keeping others members of the community from
passing judgement, even while they all covertly lived lives whose
non-observance of social niceties stamped 'hypocrite' in blazing letters
on their placid superiority.
She had always been independent,
proudly able to look after herself. Not like the complacent cows she
had gone to high school with, on the look-out for a male partner who
would keep them in material comfort. Not that she hadn't succumbed
while still young and impressionable, with an early marriage of her own.
He was a plumber, a stolid young man with deep religious convictions
who attempted, fruitlessly, to instill in her a respect for faith.
When
she left him after a few years of stifling dependence she left their
infant son in his care. She meant her life to be untrammelled by any
kind of responsibility other than to herself. She knew, if she truly
cared, that the boy was in good hands, that her husband's mother whom
she detested, would look to his care. She went back to college, studied
animal husbandry in the technical care of small animals, thinking she
would open a clinic.
Not to happen, since she wasn't really a
veterinarian, merely a technician. So she secured employment with the
local humane society, earning a low wage, but calling her own hours, and
her own terms in exchange. Animals posed no threat to her; she could
control them, and if some were recalcitrant to follow an unspoken code
of behaviour, she could inflict her own kind of punishment, and they
hadn't the means to communicate, to betray her.
By her late 40s
she was still trim and attractive. Until one approached, and her
ravaged visage surprised. It was as though her chaotic psyche had
imposed its own punishment in a very visual and disturbing way upon her
complexion, utterly marring the otherwise neat conformation of her
facial features. The skin on her face was criss-crossed with deep, unnatural-appearing fissures creating a grotesque mask that repelled people.
The
inner turmoil of her mind and her responses to outward stimuli that
exercised her resentment seemed, over time, to increase the depth of her
disaffection with people in general, making of her an unrepentant
misanthrope. She was let go from her position with the animal shelter
operated by the humane society, and she left town. She had decided to
live completely rurally, shutting herself off from constant contact with
people.
With her savings she had just enough of a down payment
to acquire a property that had long interested her. A tiny log cabin
set on three acres of beautiful land on the cusp of the Canadian Shield.
Wild junipers, stately maples and colourful birch, along with pines
and cedars grew on the property. Protuberant granite shelves alongside
grassy meadows. Close to the road sat the little cabin. Built a
century and a half ago to modestly and conveniently house a
schoolteacher who singly raised her own three children there.
Across
from that small abode was the schoolhouse itself, much, much larger.
Originally comprised of three rooms, one extremely large. Over the
years a second-story bedroom and bath had been added, a kitchen and a
glassed-in entrance running the length of the log house. Added to that
was another extension, comprising a miniature suite of study, bathroom,
and upstairs another kitchen. The people who owned this place were
elderly Dutch-Canadians whose work ethic and pride of ownership was
abundantly evident.
The woman who purchased the small abode
across from their property was greeted and welcomed by the elderly
couple. But the welcome soon wore thin, as their new neighbour began
populating her property with a menagerie that soon amounted to two
full-size horses, a miniature horse, a gaggle of geese, three miniature
goats, Pekin
ducks, and seven dogs of various descriptions, from small to large.
The noise emitted at all hours by the animals did not sit well with the
elderly pair.
That the animals, all of them, were casually
maintained, the horses with inadequate and inappropriate corrals was a
matter of concern to the neighbours, since the miniature horse had
wanderlust and would often break out of its corral. The larger of the
dogs constantly ran on the road, and often visited their property; they
were not fond of picking up after the dogs, nor of rescuing them from
the occasional dunking in the bog that lay behind their house.
Remonstrations with the young woman availed them nothing, and soon a
full-blown animus resulted.
As for the young woman, she detested
the elderly pair. She was comfortable with her dependent animals, her
little house with its combination bedroom-living room, and tiny kitchen.
She had taken herself off the electrical grid and used a
gasoline-driven pump for her well, and a propane heater for winter
warmth. She had no indoor bathroom facilities, and used an outhouse and
that suited her just fine. And she had a mortgage to maintain.
Necessitating that as a person of substance, she earn a living.
So
she took service jobs with a coffee shop, and then a local MacDonald's,
and then a fruiterer in the village, and then a succession of other
low-paid jobs in part-time work that did not interfere too much with her
way of life. Which was low-key, relaxed, and out of the public eye as
much as she could manage. And then she met a fellow at one of her
places of employment, and he seemed interested in her, and he seemed
off-beat enough to elicit her interest.
He appreciated her
mordant sense of humour and she appreciated his relaxed personality. He
was grossly overweight, but imbued with a strong work ethic, inherited
from his farmer-father with whom he lived on a nearby farm. Although he
helped his father out on the farm he also drove a refrigerated truck
for a local dairy and made daily deliveries in the area. In time they
decided to consolidate their relationship and he moved into the little
log house with her and with her animals.
His presence irritated
the elderly couple across the street even more, because the man was of
Dutch heritage, and they couldn't, for the life of them, understand how
anyone decent could become involved with someone like her. After a few
more years of accusations and denunciations flung back and forth across
the road, the elderly couple sold their beloved property and moved back
to the city. Now there was no one to complain about her animals, since
the people who moved in kept a menagerie of their own.
And they
had a young daughter. Who really enjoyed being with the woman and
helping her to feed her farmyard animals. The year the family moved in,
the woman and her boyfriend conspired to scatter colourful candy Easter
eggs on the property across the street, which enchanted
the young girl.
Relations began to fray between the woman and her
dairy-delivering boyfriend soon after he bought the mortgage on her
property, even though she had encouraged him to do just that.
They
began quarrelling, arguing between themselves. She was accused of
spiriting away money from her job as a cashier in a shop in the nearby
town, and charges were levelled against her. Soon afterward her
common-law partner discovered that several thousand dollars he had put
away in a 'safe place' where he thought she would never look (the glove
compartment of his truck) had disappeared. He asked, but she had no
knowledge whatever of where it had disappeared to.
He moved out
soon afterward. And someone -- she thought it might have been the new
people who lived across the street -- contacted the Humane Society about
the degraded state her animals were living in. Their enclosures were
never cleaned out, they were never properly fed, and their health was visibly
declining. She sold the goats and the two horses, and gave up the
ducks to people living further along the road. It was rumoured that
they were destined for someone's table.
Two
of her dogs mysteriously disappeared; her neighbours suspected they
might have starved to death, and she had buried them on the property.
Her estranged common-law spouse took legal action against her, to have
her vacate the property, since he was the legal owner. After their
dispute went to adjudication he paid her the stipulated sum she was
awarded by the court, and she finally left the property that she felt
had meant so much to her. The property was an absolute shambles.
When
finally she did leave, he moved back in, and speedily set about
removing the old clunkers she had left to decay, having driven them one
after the other into the ground, then acquiring another and then
another. The piles of trash were taken away. The battered-down pens
were dismantled. The grass was neatly cut. The little log cabin was
cleared out of all the detritus that had accumulated over the years she
lived there and would never discard anything.
The dogs went back
to the various rescue groups she had originally adopted them from. And
she, she went off somewhere, no one is entirely certain. It is certain,
however, that she will always be able to look after herself, even if it
is to the disadvantage of others upon whom she will prey, a succubus on
society who imagines herself to be courageously, defiantly, different.
And in her way she most certainly is.
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