Who by Fire (35 page)

In their phone calls, Ella said the plant still smelled but the dangerous days were few. When she put him on the phone, Tom said it was a shame Aladdin hadn’t sold that field twenty years ago. But that’s all he would say about it.

Tom had his cows still, and, in the summer, put up a bit of hay. He sold the calves in the early fall, and his feedlot stood empty. Ella gardened still but on a reduced scale. For recreation, they took drives together along oil exploration roads into the mountains; nothing too adventurous, never overnight. They liked home was how Ella put it.

On a weekend off, Billy took Ginny south to introduce her. It was the expected success. Ginny had low-key ways, an infectious laugh. Ella and she did the instant-bonding thing women do. By the second day, Tom took Ginny out in his cigarette-butt-strewn pickup and showed her the sights. Ginny loved Tom: the jokes, the languorous stories, his old-fashioned chivalry.

“He’s so handsome and funny,” she said as they drove away. “So calm.”

“Do you think I’m like him?”

“You might
get
like him.”

When he finished his degree and went to work full-time at Sulphur Falls, Billy lived in the High Brazeau house and counted the days until he and Ginny were married and living together. Even with the loneliness, he would have told anyone his life was great, almost perfect—until one night when the phone rang quite late, and it was Ella.

“Billy. I’m sorry to tell you but your dad is dead. Tom is dead.”

The line bristled. A million mites were crawling up the wire.

“He came in from the cattle. We had supper. I was carrying our dishes to the sink. I heard something, and he was on the floor. I didn’t have time to do anything. He was dead.”

She was not crying, but her voice was pulled tight.

“Is he there?”

“What? Oh, you mean his body. No. I called the priest but he didn’t come until after the ambulance had taken Tom away. He said he would go into town and give him the last rites there.”

Then she cried. He heard a clatter. He pictured the receiver swinging from its cord. Far away, she blew her nose sharply.

“This is what I want you to do. Donna is waiting for you at her place. The two of you come down together. There’s no reason to hurry. Do you understand that?”

Billy said he did.

“I’ll phone Jeannie now.” She hung up with the faintest click.

Donna and he were silent in the car. Somewhere near High River, she said she could hardly believe it. Billy felt the same, but his thoughts were on times when Tom had noted discomfort: tightness in his lungs, a pinch in his ribs. There was his rumbling smoker’s cough, and the fatigue Ella mentioned. Why had it not been obvious?

As quickly, Billy knew why. Even carved down as Tom was by everything, he was still the family’s leader, its strong man. If Tom did not declare himself to be in a dangerous state of health—and he never had—none of his children could move past that to any other conclusion.

This was the first thought that seemed worth saying to Donna, but many more miles passed before he did. They were crossing over the Porcupine Hills by then, and in the east, a half moon had risen high enough to stare at them through the trees.

“I let him think I was so interested in the farm. The cattle,” she said.

“You
were
interested.”

“I was interested in
him
. I wanted Dad to love me more than he did anyone else.”

“He did love you more.”

“And then after the club calf died, I dumped him.”

She was crying, and Billy let her be. His car rose and fell through the shadowed landscape. He knew what came beyond every hilltop and curve. On the flat, he could see each living home, each deserted shack. He felt where the creeks narrowed into culverts beneath the highway. Billy slowed when the road wove through a break in the ridge. A buck stood on the shoulder, grazed by the headlights.

Donna kept on sobbing and Billy saw in her state what it was going to be like from now on. Each Ryder would believe she or he had caused Tom’s death. Each of them would insist on it, would see his or her line toward this night as the bold one. Billy did not have to think why he was the cause. He had always known.

After the funeral, Jeannie decided Ella should not stay at the farm. Jeannie omitted the word “alone” but Billy knew that was what she meant; alone even while her son was in the house and looking after the farm.

Prayers, Mass for the Dead, ceremony at the graveside, lunch at the house: through every stage of the community’s farewell to Tom, Billy answered each question he was asked, responded to each comment that wanted response, but an inappropriate hostility roved inside him that he could not hide. Donna poked him in the ribs; Jeannie rebuked him in an upstairs bedroom; still he could not do other than what he was doing.

Ginny seemed to understand better, or at least made no criticism of him. She had a nice way of talking about Tom, whom she’d only met once, of consoling Ella and Billy’s sisters. She did well too at representing the silent man onto whose arm she held tightly. Lance and Judy had brought her down, and Billy suggested she return with them. He explained he had to stay and look after the livestock, which was true but not his motive. Ginny knew he didn’t want her there. She accepted with grace his choice to go it alone.

On the night of the funeral, after the last car pulled out of the yard, Jeannie’s car with Ella aboard, Billy found a bottle of blended Scotch in the saved-paper-bag cupboard and started to drink. He drank out of the mineral-encrusted water glass from the porch. He was mad at everything that came into his mind. All he could commend himself on was that he had kept this anger bottled until now. Fear of not being able to was why he did not want Ginny here. It was the same reason he did not want Lance and Judy around.

Whatever Lance thought about his goodwill toward the Ryder family, Bill saw it as bullshit now. He recalled the man’s words about wanting to modernize Aladdin Hatfield, but he was hearing them tonight as Tom must have, as self-aggrandizing and less than true.

And the job of turning Billy Ryder into a crackerjack engineer, wasn’t that also bullshit? Something to soothe Lance’s conscience about the plant his industry had dropped in the Ryders’ lap? Lance had come and gone, then had come and gone again. There were always greener pastures for Lance Evert.

At the funeral, Billy had watched with a fire in his head as Lance bowed before Ella and took her hand. He saw a pain in his mother’s face that was different from what the other condolences were causing her. If Billy had let himself loose in that moment, he might have hit Lance, might have thrown him out of their house and harried
him into his car. This: to Lance and Judy, who had done so much for him, who had treated him like family.

When Lance, Judy, and Ginny did leave, Ginny had looked back at Billy out the back window of the car as long as she could. Just before the dust rose, Billy saw the sun glint off the tears in her beautiful eyes. He was being unfair to her, she who had never done him any wrong, who contained almost no capacity for harm. Choosing him to love was her only crime.

While Billy was drunk—and he got deeply and lastingly drunk that night—he clung to the neck of a gallon bottle of sweet sherry and stood on top of the driveway hill. A hard wind blew in his face, and the old plant’s flare jigged in the wind.

“You fucking killed him!” he yelled at it as loud as he could. “You cross-eyed son of a whore!”

Later still, he staggered around the power pole, in the circle of yard-light. What drove him was electric and jagged and centred in his heart. His course around the driveway circle made him so dizzy he fell and mashed his cheek into the gravel. “Hundred per cent fucking idiot,” he told the cold grey rocks. He went to lift the jug and found it light. Nothing left on his finger but the glass loop.

When he got to his feet, he returned to the house and opened the porch cupboards until he found his father’s lantern. He walked to the barnyard and let himself through the gate. He moved the cone of light in search of cows. The evening of his death, Tom had brought two into the home corral, one with a swollen hoof and another about to calve. The pregnant one was lying down and did not seem to find him strange; likely she could see nothing but light and assumed the human behind it was Tom. In the curve between her back leg and belly, he saw the white-haired udder round with milk, the teats pink and inflated. His insides zoomed with pleasure. A calf to deliver; to watch grow.

Bill had been on the farm two months. He did not buy newspapers or watch TV, and estimated the date by what wildflowers were blooming. During the day, he went out to the pasture and walked among Tom’s show herd. Sometimes he lay down in the grass and slept. In the evenings, he spun playing cards into an inverted cowboy hat. He turned down all invitations from neighbours to come for meals. He went to town when he was out of food and beer, and otherwise stayed home.

His sisters called to scold him. They’d heard reports from neighbours of emptied whisky bottles strewn on the lawn, of Billy wandering the roads in sock feet. He told them it was untrue. In fact he kept himself and his clothes neat and clean. After the first week of excess, he drank only beer. Between rounds of card-tossing, he did push-ups and sit-ups.

When Lance called, he would ask about Ella, her health, her mental state, before he asked about Billy. He would tell him about the plant, and at the end of the conversation, would urge Billy to come back to work sooner rather than later. Its junior engineer was not something a plant could do without. Lance was covering the gap by bringing in old friends, retirees, but that could not go on much longer.

When it was Ginny on the phone, Billy would say he was not ready to come back. He had to wait for Ella’s return. They would decide together what to do.

Ginny would start out soft with him, but, when she heard him saying the same things, chapter and verse, she would begin to cry. She said she was not sure how much longer she could stand this.

The timing of Ella’s phone calls could not be predicted. Somehow she knew he would never answer anyone else’s call if he knew which
ones were hers. She understood many things others did not. She was often harsh with him, telling him how foolish he was to gamble Ginny and his career. There was no reason he couldn’t leave the farm right now. Half a dozen neighbours were willing to look after Tom’s cows. Nor was there much hay to cut. It could be contracted out.

Bill tried to get her to come home.

“I’m taking good care of things. I can cook, you know. You can rest all you like.”

“I’ll come home when I’m ready,” she said.

Looking out the kitchen window on a hot morning, Bill saw Ginny drive into the yard. Before she stepped from the car, he knew she had come to leave him. “Fine, then,” he said. “The hell with you.” But when she was inside and speaking her piece, he wept and begged her not to do this. He would change; he really would. He was not sure why he was like he was, but it wouldn’t last; it couldn’t. When it was over, they could go on with the plans they’d had before.

Sad, and now defeated on top of it, Ginny got back in the car and drove away. She would wait, she’d told him, but not much longer.

Then Ella did return. She was not there to live with him, as he had hoped. She had rented a basement suite in town and would live there for the time being. She had come to tell Bill that she had listed Tom’s cows for sale. Starting today, she wanted him to prepare for that sale and for an equipment auction. She was not sure yet what to do with the farmhouse and land, sell it or keep it. She would call a family meeting later in the summer.

“I have to hay,” Bill said.

“I’ve sold the hay crop to Vic Sebald.”

Ella was thin and older looking, but brisk and certain.

“What should I do?” he asked her.

She was sitting at the table, in Tom’s place. She looked him in the eye and there was no softness there.

“You should get on with your life. If you intend to marry Virginia, do so. If you want to work in gas plants, phone Lance and tell him which day you’ll be back.”

Ella looked around her house, at the dishes in the drying rack, at the hatful of cards on a chair.

“Each of us treated Tom worse than he deserved at some time or another. It does him no good to throw your life away now.”

Fort McMurray

“
HELLO, JUDY?
It’s Bill Ryder.”

“Billy. We were just talking about you.”

An image of Lance and Judy in the kitchen nook: Lance with his nose tubes.

“Good things, I hope.”

No reply.

“Look, Judy, can Lance talk? I have a business question.”

Judy made a strange sound, a laugh and a cry both at once. “I don’t think you’ll get an answer, Billy. Lance died.”

The line sang. Judy covered the mouthpiece and said something to whoever was there. When she was back, Bill said he was sorry. “When you said you were talking about me, I thought you meant you and Lance.”

“It’s funny. I’m with Ginny. We were talking about how I couldn’t find you. I phoned and left messages. I phoned your plant and they acted like they’d never heard of you.”