Who by Fire (24 page)

“You bet. Over two weeks ago. Government said there were no significant problems. No danger to the people living here. I heard that and I said to Joan, ‘That’s it, then. We gotta take this thing into our own hands.’ She agreed with me.”

Tom felt like a fool. How could the health study results be out, and no one in his own community knew? He also felt a surge of anger toward the
Haultain Herald
. He read it every week, front to back, and the only thing they’d ever said about the study was a mention when it started. Nor did their ignoring the news make sense. Like the town’s businessmen, the newspaper was all in favour of the plant and the money it brought. If the health study said there were no problems, no basis to the farmers’ complaints, you’d think the paper would want to carry the story.

Joan leaned toward Tom. “I take it your community isn’t the same? Not as committed?”

“No,” Tom said. “Some are too cheap. Some are scared. Some hope their sons’ll get jobs at the plant. There’s two of us who are trying hard, and a couple more we might convince.” Only half the community had signed the letter they sent to the government. A few of those wouldn’t talk about it any more once the health study was announced.

It was getting late and, since the whisky had kept pouring, Tom was in a bind. He didn’t feel he could drive home. He also wanted to meet the Arsenaults. The Darbys said they had a guest room all made up and would be happy to have him stay. He asked to make a phone call. Ella answered, and he told her he was staying. Their cows were out on grass now and didn’t need him. If she could give the pigs some water and chop, that would take care of things until tomorrow evening.

She asked if he’d been drinking, and he said he had. She said something about Jeannie, some problem, but he said they could talk when he was home.

When Tom came back to the table, John Darby said, “Since nobody’s driving …” and poured more whisky.

Next morning, with an aching head, Tom went to the Arsenaults’. They were fine people too, ranchers who’d had a couple of cows abort when the sulphur gas was strong. They were very interested in Tom’s story of the club calf. They read Doc Moore’s autopsy notes several times.

“Too bad you don’t live down here,” said Kelly, the wife. “We could use your help.”

Tom was wishing it too: that he lived here and was part of their fight. He really did want what the Arsenaults and Darbys had. The pride in what they were doing; the confidence that they would get it done.

What was needed at home was a leader, and Tom realized he had to go home and be that leader.

Ella was annoyed that Tom had brushed off Jeannie’s problem over the phone. The day he had left for Dry Fork was the day of Gerry Traynor’s high school prom. Jeannie’s grad event at the Catholic school had been the Friday before, but Gerry’s school, being much bigger, had more money to spend. There was going to be a popular band all the way from Lethbridge. Jeannie had bought a bright lemon-yellow dress.

The night before Gerry’s prom, Jeannie stayed with her friend Eleanor in town, so she could get to the hairdresser early on Saturday. But Saturday afternoon, Ella got a phone call from her mother. Jeannie had turned up there and wanted Ella to come and get her.

It could only mean that she had decided not to go to Gerry’s prom. Ella had enough to do without making a trip into town, and she tried to get her mother to put Jeannie on the phone. She said Jeannie was in bed and didn’t want to talk. Ella pushed for more information, but all her mother would say was something about hair, and that Ella should come right away.

Ella left Billy with Donna. On the drive in, she felt angry. She thought the problem must be that Jeannie did not like her hair. Ella did not have time for such nonsense.

When she swung into her parents’ driveway, Jeannie was waiting outside. She jumped in the back seat and said they had to stop at Eleanor’s to get her suitcase. When they got there, Jeannie asked Ella to go in. She didn’t want Eleanor or Eleanor’s mom to see her.

Of course, by then, Ella had noticed Jeannie’s hair. Alice had given her an updo, a real tower with ringlets hanging down. The hair was still more or less all right on one side but was all pulled down on the other.

Ella put the suitcase in the trunk and got back behind the wheel. She looked at Jeannie in the rear-view and asked if Gerry had done it, meaning the hair. Jeannie said no. Ella drove them home without pressing for more.

Next day, while Jeannie was having a bath, Ella took Donna aside and asked her if she knew what was going on. The sisters hardly spoke but did share a room; it seemed possible Donna would know. Donna’s guess was that Jeannie and Gerry had broken up. Why else would she cry all night?

Ella phoned the hairdresser and asked how Jeannie had seemed when she was getting her hair done.

“Kind of sad,” said Alice. “Or I guess I should say she
got
sad. She was happy as a lark when she came.”

“What caused the change?”

“You know she’s in the paper this week, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t know. We don’t get the paper until Tuesday.”

“Front-page story is about the health study at your plant. I showed it to Jeannie while she was in the chair, because she’s quoted. I thought she’d be pleased to be a celebrity, but she got all upset.”

“Did she do anything to wreck her hair?”

“Something happened to her hair?”

“Oh, never mind.” Ella could hear the tub draining.

“I did her hair real pretty.”

“Of course you did, Alice.”

The newspaper article was another mystery. If Jeannie had been interviewed, why would she have kept it secret? Everyone in the house would read the paper eventually. And what could have been so shocking about seeing in print what she’d told a reporter?

After her bath, Jeannie went and sat on the outside porch. She took a magazine with her, but Ella could see through the kitchen window that she never looked at it. She stared across at the mountains
and was stone still. She had washed out all trace of the prom hairdo, and her long hair hung wet.

“Are you warm enough?” Ella called out to her.

“Yes.”

Nothing had changed by the time Tom got back from Dry Fork. Ella went to his truck as he was pulling in, so she could talk to him before he saw Jeannie. He was puffed up and right away started to tell her about his adventure. She said with emphasis that he needed to know what was happening here first.

“Something’s up between Jeannie and Gerry, and she’s awfully blue.” Ella quickly said the rest: about the health study article in which their daughter was quoted.

“That’s what they said down at Dry Fork, that the results are out. But why would Jeannie be quoted?”

“Newspaper will come in a couple of days. I guess we’ll find out then.”

On Tuesday, when Ella saw the mail woman’s car stop at their box by the old school, she went to where Jeannie was sunning in the yard and asked her to drive down and get it. Jeannie was soon back and dropped the bundle on the kitchen table.

Ella asked, “Did you look at the newspaper? Someone said you’re in it.”

“I’ve seen it,” Jeannie said, and went back outside.

Ella pulled the newspaper from the pile.

Though Alice had told her, it was still a shock to see that: the blunt headline. All that time that the Titrilog had sat in their yard, and it had found “nothing”—even when the gas killed an animal the
size of Donna’s steer a hundred yards away. She remembered the two pens bumping off the edge of the Titrilog’s disc. One of the worst days, and because it was so bad it broke the machine there would be nothing in the study results about it. It was a week before someone had come to fix it, and the air had stunk the whole time.

Ella went through the article carefully, then read the part about Jeannie a second time. “Jeannie Ryder, a teenage girl living on a farm close to the Aladdin Hatfield gas plant, said her family had often been sick from the gas fumes. They suffered nosebleeds, headaches, and sore eyes on many occasions. Some of their farm animals had died, supposedly from the gas. Miss Ryder, who was visiting friends in a popular Haultain restaurant, also said that she supposed the plant was progress. The smell was ‘the smell of money.’ ”

There was a small paragraph at the head of the column, set with different print than the rest. It said the piece was a reprint from Edmonton’s newspaper. So that made sense. When the reporter had told Jeannie he was from an Edmonton paper, she might have assumed no one down here would ever see it. That would explain her dismay, once she realized everyone, town and country, would soon read what she had said.

Jeannie was sitting on the porch. Ella stepped outside and perched on the railing beside her. Her daughter’s eyes were full of tears.

“I never said it was the smell of money, Mom. Stupid Gerry said that. Now everybody will think I’m awful.”

“You told the truth about the sickness and the animals,” Ella said.

“That’s what I mean about everybody. The people in town too.”

“So you and Gerry had a fight about it?”

“Bette asked Gerry to bring me to their house so she could see my hair. Bert was on days off and was there too.”

“Had he seen the paper?”

“Oh yeah. He had it on his lap. Bette asked me to sit down and have a lemonade. Then Bert said I was no expert on sickness and pigs. He called us complainers. I got mad and told him we’re just as good as him.”

“I don’t suppose you broke up with Gerry because his father’s mean.”

“I left the house and Gerry came after me. He tried to smooth it over. Said his father’d had some drinks and he’d forget about it in a day or two. He said his dad was mad because he’d been the one who recommended the reporter talk to me at Mah’s. He thought I wouldn’t talk like that about the plant, that I’d have more sense and be loyal. That’s when I blew up.”

Jeannie laughed, and Ella knew the rest. She pictured her daughter sticking a hand into her tower of hair, yanking it down. She got up and hugged Jeannie around the shoulders.

Ella noticed there was an opened envelope on Jeannie’s lap.

“What’s that?”

Jeannie fished a page out and handed it to Ella. It was a letter from Notre Dame University, in Nelson. They had accepted her into their teaching program.

“You didn’t tell me you’d applied.”

“I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure. I guess there’s nothing stopping me now.”

“Quite a mail day,” said Ella.

“Did you see the one for you?”

“What?”

“In the mail. There’s a letter for you.”

Ella went back to the kitchen and brushed through the envelopes. It was the strangest thing to see her name, just hers, printed on a letter. She picked it open and a blush rose to her face.

Ella blushed again at how the letter ended. Before she had any chance to think about what this meant to her, she heard a sound at the window and, looking up, saw Jeannie’s face on the other side of the screen. For the first time since coming home, Jeannie was grinning.

“Who’s it from?” she asked.

“Lance Evert. Do you remember him?”

“Of course. The engineer before Gerry’s dad. He used to come here for coffee.”

“He’s at another plant now. He wanted to tell us how much better it is there.”

Jeannie still looked amused.

Ella pushed the letter into the envelope. “I’ll show it to your dad tonight,” she said, realizing that now she must.

Once in a blue moon, Tom would come back to the house after a day of work and feel that everything had changed in his absence. This was such a night.

He had spent the day in the hayfields trying to decide what to cut first. As soon as he sat down to supper, Jeannie told him she was going to B.C. for university, to Nelson, a town in the West Kootenays. She also showed him the
Haultain Herald
delivered that day, with the front-page story about the health study—the one Ella had told him about. Jeannie said she was quoted incorrectly; she had not said anything about progress or the smell of money. Gerry, the ex-boyfriend, had said those things.

As he ate his dinner, Tom found himself looking at Donna, expecting some bombshell from her too, but Donna was where she always was these days: a place far away. The next piece of unexpected news came from Ella. She went out of the room and returned with a letter. She set the page on the table beside his plate, smoothed it,
and put the envelope, addressed to her, beside it. She stood and waited for him to read it.

Though short, the letter managed to say several important things. Ella’s showing it to him said still more. He read it twice.
Dear Ella. Your friend, Lance
. Lance would be happy if she wrote back. Tom made himself concentrate on the gas plant information. By doing that, he came up with something to say.