Across the street Teagan comes out of his house. Plaid hat, snow pants, large gloves, swimming in his coat. The lawn is covered with snow. The boulevard is banked high with huge chunks of snow after yesterday’s storm. Teagan begins to carry chunks of snow to the lawn. He is choosy. Sometimes walking further down the street to find the perfect chunks. He is building, not a snowman, a snow fort. Some of the chunks are so large he struggles to carry them, until one overcomes him, and he falls. Face down in the snow he lies for long seconds until he rises, snow covered, shakes himself, and trudges over to a smooth piece of snowy lawn. He lies down and makes a snow angel. Refreshed, he arises and goes back to finding the next perfect chunk. Refreshed, I turn from my window to do an adult task.
Category: Short Story
Eldorado (Madeleine Horton)
My sister thinks I have a lot of crackpot theories. Not that she would use a word like that. She says in an even voice, “You might want to not broadcast those ideas too loudly.” That would be her theory about our trip to Red Butte.
I was working at a small stable. In the middle of nowhere or what passes for nowhere in that part of southern Ontario. I was doing massage on an older mare. I used to do people too, but I got tired of it. Too much complaining about my fees and come-ons from older guys.
Janis was standing at the head of the mare in case it got antsy. An excuse. Janis is a real talker and there aren’t many people around in the daytime. Most of her boarders are working so they can pay for these massages.
I’ve known Janis for years. She’s on the wrong side of forty and looks it. Too much sun. Her arms are real sinewy, ropey-like. Her hands are always calloused and raw, almost every finger crooked, from making a living wrangling rebellious horses at the end of a line. Still attractive at a glance though. She wears her hair long – lucky because it’s dead straight. I had to shorten my curly hair years ago. I knew it had the blowsy look.
I met Janis at a stable. She was one for the dramatic scene from the beginning. She married a pilot and on the wedding day, he parachuted onto the cross-country field and she picked him up in a two-horse carriage she borrowed.
I lost track of her for a few years until she started her stable. She told me she had kicked the bum, the pilot, out because his layovers were, well, lay overs. After that I saw her occasionally with an assortment of men at horse shows, usually guys looking baffled and doing her bidding. Carrying water and such. I had to admire how she made her little stable work.
So, I was stunned when she was holding that horse and said, “Ellen, I’ve got big news. I’m selling up and moving to live with my boyfriend.” I had not even seen a man lurking around there for a while.
I took my hands off the mare’s haunches and stepped closer to her. “You have got to be kidding.” I saw right away that was wrong and felt bad. “Tell me all about him.” That got me off the hook.
“His name is Colton” – I forget the last name – “and he owns a ranch that breeds and trains cutting horses.”
She met him on-line. I must have had a sceptical look because she laughed. “Oh, Ellen, come on. Everyone does it now.”
He was near her age. Divorced, of course. No kids. Had sold horses to Robert Redford and that media guy, Jane Fonda’s ex. Liked western sunsets, loved to barbeque, preferred sitting around the fireplace to bars. I was tempted to ask about quiet walks along the beach but held back. Instead, “When will I meet him?”
Her voice softened and she spoke in that tone young, untested brides do. Not like her at all. “I don’t think you will. Unless you come visit. Which I’d love for you to do. In South Dakota.”
“South-frigging-Dakota. You’ve got to be kidding. You read about women doing such things.”
She was set on it. Business was down, dealing with spoilt horses was getting harder. This was a chance for a real future.
She wouldn’t take her horse.
“No, it will be just Tucker-dog and me.”
She admitted Colton hadn’t mentioned a dog. “You can usually trust a man with a dog.” I said.
She settled up quickly. Turned out she only rented the land. Gave her horse to a friend. Sent most of her possessions to Goodwill. She gave me a wrought iron hitching post with a horse’s head I had admired. The day I went to pick it up she gave me a piece of paper with her address. I stared at it as if deciphering hieroglyphics. It read:
Eldorado, nr. Red Butte, South Dakota 37558
“Keep in touch,” she said.
Janis isn’t a hugger and nor am I. We looked at each other, quiet. “See you,” I said as if I’d be back in a month.
I waited to let her settle in. I phoned first. Number no longer in service. Unsurprising now she was stateside. The letter was not returned so I assumed she had it. No response. But at Christmas a strange postcard arrived. A black and white photo of three early settlers, a man and two women standing outside a cabin, more like a shed. Where they stood was a nowhere, not a tree or shrub or rise of land for a location. I turned it over. The postmark was illegible. The faded pencil scrawls were inked over with my address and a wobbly heart and ‘Janis’ printed in the large unruly letters a first grader might produce. I knew I had to visit Janis.
My sister and I were driving along the Needle Highway in South Dakota. A scenic detour she wanted to make. Thankfully she agreed to make the three-day trip from Phoenix with me. I think she gets bored. Her husband is retired but does a lot of contract work.
Peggy was excited about the rock formations she knew we would see. I think people who like rock formations are the same people who like abstract art. Peggy has a lot of that in her house. Myself, I could never settle in a place without real trees. Oak, ash, maple. Not the scrawny trees we saw there. I told Peggy about the mystery man Janis met over the internet, the quick move, and the long silence. Nothing of my suspicions or the post card.
“You always have strange friends.” I let that comment pass. It did irk me though. Peggy’s life has been highly conventional. Her husband is an on-the-move-research scientist. Their two daughters are high achievers. All their friends are doctors and lawyers and such, as the song says.
I decided I might as well tell her about what I thought was really going on. “I don’t want to alarm you but I suspect we might not see Janis. I have a feeling she is being held captive.”
“Good God, Ellen, then what are we doing here? And what do you mean a feeling? A feeling or a theory?” You might know she was a linguistics major.
As I said, she thinks I am always promoting some cockeyed views about events. Not conspiracy theories, of course. “What do I mean?”
“Yes. Like your idea that violence and rioting in some places are explained by dehydration because no one has enough water to drink and dehydration causes irrational behaviour.”
I did happen to think that. Too many men running amok without water bottles. But I ignored that dig. “As it happens, I do have some thoughts on missing women. Don’t you notice how many aren’t found? It’s not easy to move and conceal a body. I think a lot of them are being held captive. I’ll bet it’s way more common than you think.”
“That is so disturbing. I don’t know how you can think about things like that.” She changed the subject to more of her research on South Dakota vegetation.
We reached Red Butte late afternoon. A faded sign announced, Home of the Pheasant Festival. “Must be the ringed neck pheasant. The state bird.” I wanted to show I knew something.
Peggy laughed. “You must mean the ring-necked pheasant. Though possibly true at the festival.” She took her hands off the steering wheel, twisted both hands on her neck and mimed breaking it.
Sometimes she breaks out in weird humour.
We pulled into the only motel in town. A six-cabin affair. The Pheasant Motel- surprise. A worn-out looking man booked us in. He seemed uninterested in our business there.
We set out for the Post Office where I hoped to get directions. Closed. Open three days a week for two hours according to the window sign. Next door another older man sat behind the counter of the hardware store, reading a Bible. I made some small talk about the pheasant festival but the man said it was mostly a local affair.
I was looking for directions to a place our GPS would not track I said. “The Post Office is closed,” I added as if this would be news.
“They don’t know much anyways. It’s all cluster mailboxes out there now. Some folks they never see.” I heard Peggy’s muttered, “Good God.”
“We’re looking for a place called Eldorado.”
He looked up now with interest and fixed his eyes on me. “I know about it on account of the name. Some like to dream big.”
He had never been there. Didn’t know anyone who had. But drew a map to an old logging road. It was about twenty miles away. I figured the kilometres roughly in my head.
“Hope you got a decent truck.” He nodded when I said I was from Canada.
My sister says she doesn’t care about vehicles as long as they run. I could sense otherwise. She was tense with all the jarring and bumping given to her SUV. She clutched the steering wheel with both hands and looked straight ahead.
“At least we aren’t on a mountain road.” Outside nothing but phallic-like rocks – her words from earlier – struggling aspen trees and in the distance ponderosa pines. Her research again.
The road ended abruptly in a turnaround and small clearing. An old trailer curved and shaped like an egg huddled alone in dry weeds. Amidst its rust, I could make out the original maroon and gold colour. “Do you know it’s called a teardrop trailer?”
“I suppose you think that makes it an omen.” I’ll say this. Peggy is often good at reading me.
No one was there. No one had bothered to shut the door properly. Inside, scarcely room for two people to move around. Peggy started going through the cupboards. I slid by her to the sleeping area. The mattresses were thin and dirty. I was leery of mice. I can’t abide a mouse inside.
“Nothing much here,” Peggy said. “A few mugs, a part of a jar of instant coffee, a can opener, cutlery, two cans of chili, matches.”
I looked under the mattresses as if expecting some big revelation. Nothing. There wasn’t much else to inspect. An oil lamp, a couple of musty pillows, a brown towel, no blood. “I think that’s it. I’ll take a quick look around the outside of the trailer.”
Peggy was already out the door.
I opened the cupboards again. One mug had a hunting scene with a horse and hounds coursing a fox. I put it in my jacket pocket.
I walked around the front of the trailer. Looking for I knew not what. Above the tiny front window was a chrome name plate: Eldorado. The brand of the trailer. Not even an original name for the place then. Behind the trailer was yet more untidy. Several empty oil barrels, a couple of tires, a broken webbed chair, all partly visible in the scrubby grass and weeds. Two more folding chairs, upended, around a fire pit filled with ashes and poked through by shards of grass. Something hung around the arm of one chair. Closer, I could see it was a dog’s collar, Tucker’s braided leather collar, and in the fire pit bones and some bits of charred black fur. “Fuck,” I said, and ran.
You know how the drive back from a place can seem shorter than the drive to the place. Not this time. I wanted to tell Peggy to drive faster but I didn’t want to scare her. Besides what were we running from? It was dark when we got to Red Butte. I couldn’t face staying there again. We drove to the nearest city, three hours away.
“What did you hope to find?” Peggy asked after a long shower in the security of a national brand hotel. I sat in a comfortable chair with the mug in my hand turning it around and around, looking at the hounds coursing the lone fox. There wasn’t much to say. Janis, of course. A ranch, maybe a struggling business. Maybe the guy would be a lot older than Janis but still it would all be good. Tucker would come out to greet me the way he always did.
“It was Eldorado.” Peggy looked up from the phone that now engrossed her. “I saw the name on the trailer, Eldorado, a brand plate. And Janis was there. I’m pretty sure.” I paused. “Didn’t you notice this mug with the hunt scene? That’s not the kind of mug a man out here would have. It’s fine china.
English made. English scene. The kind Janis would bring. The others were thick, dollar store junk.” “Shouldn’t we call the police or something?” Peggy would like that much drama.
Maybe I should have told her about finding that collar. I don’t know why I didn’t. Everything seemed to become more unreal when I saw that fire pit. It wasn’t the sort of thing that happens to Peggy and me. “There’s not much to go on. An adult woman, from out of the country, hooks up with a guy over the internet. Last name unknown. First name probably common here. Said by another woman, also from out of the country, to have disappeared. Oh, and the mug. What cop is going to understand about the mug?”
It wasn’t like we could go searching for Janis. Where would you begin in that vast emptiness? Peggy looked at me but said nothing. I don’t usually get this worked up. I walked over to her, bent down, and even hugged her. “Thanks for being such a good sport with all the driving and everything.”
At the window I looked into the dark. I wanted to go home. To my home, not Peggy’s. To see real trees. Pick up Ranger from the boarding kennel. Settle in on our couch. Make a real cup of tea. Why can’t the Americans make a proper cup of tea? Dishwater. Damn Janis. After all, I tried to warn her about him. What else could I do?
“You know,” I said more to myself than Peggy, “that was just the kind of place where someone like Janis could walk into a hardware store one day and announce she escaped years, say seven years, of being held in an abandoned cold war bunker.” Things like that happen. I tried picturing it all out.
Instead I kept seeing that collar. Such a shame about the dog.
Grandma Anna’s Funeral (Alison Pearce)
Grandma Anna has just died. Bless her! It was May, 1943.
Thank goodness she had presence of mind to plan her expiration date in the springtime. Had it been January, the locals may not have been able to master the snowdrifts that often filled the country roads in winter. They would have been disappointed had they not been able to see who had come to pay their respects. For everyone goes to all the funerals in the country, you know. It is simply the thing to do.
But this was a special funeral and no doubt it would be a big one. Grandma Anna was in her nineties and was the last of her generation to go. She was 3rd generation on my father’s side of the family but she was still considered a pioneer. She was the only one left who knew full well what had come before. If anyone in the area needed to “know” something, they came to Grandma Anna. There would be an emptiness with her gone for there was no one who could fill her place now.
Grandma Anna had been born in 1850, the year that her father had built that beautiful Georgian brick house on the lake road. It was the first brick house to be built in the county. And less than a mile the other way on the lake road was the home where her husband, Leonard, had been born. His father had built that home in 1874 and it was even more elegant than the house in which Grandma Anna had been born. Leonard’s house had seventeen rooms to fill it.
Leonard, Grandma Anna’s husband had not been a physically strong man, but he provided for Anna as best he could. Theirs was a frame gingerbread house with an outdoor privy and though Anna may have longed for the bricks and mortar of the home in which she had been brought up, no one ever knew. She held her head high. Her home was her castle and she expected everyone to treat her as the queen she was, who lived in it. And they did!
Her sons Edwin and James, who rarely saw eye to eye, had agreed on one thing. Their mother would have the best casket that money could buy. Made of polished oak with brass handles, it had a quilted satin interior and satin pillow on which to lay Grandma Anna’s head. Too large for the parlour, the casket had been brought into the house through the back kitchen door and into the living room where it remained throughout the visitation. Grandma Anna’s bible, always opened on a stand in the parlour, was open to “The Beatitudes” on a stand beside the casket now. An air of peace and holiness almost seemed to prevail.
Edwin and James knew there would be a lot of people. Anna’s lane was narrow and was flanked by huge jack pines on either side. The visitor’s vehicles were to continue on down a side lane, through James’ property and out to the main road. On the day of the funeral, the procession would follow the country road down to St. Peter’s Church for the service and on to the cemetery for burial, where lay Grandma Anna’s final resting place.
On the day of the visitation, the first person to arrive was Jacob Dinsmore and his wife Effie Cusack. Everyone assumed they were husband and wife for they had lived together for years on the town’s main street. Jacob, the only townsfolk gentleman who had a horse now, kept it on the property behind his house. He came early to Grandma Anna’s house, hoping to avoid the frightening noises of the automobiles, especially that dreadful Ford car of Ernie McKillop’s. “Why he does not get his engine checked, I will never know!” said Jacob.
Just as he and Effie were about to climb into their buggy to leave, who should drive in but Ernie himself. And wouldn’t you know? Ernie drove his car and parked right up beside the post where Jacob had hitched his horse. Muttering under his breath, Jacob was forced to step back until the churning noise of McKillop’s car had ceased and his horse Prince had calmed down. “Why he does not get his engine checked, I will never know!” said Jacob.
Along with Edwin and James, Anna’s two widowed daughters, Norah and Beatrice who both lived up the road in Wallacetown, were there at their mother’s home to receive guests. as well. A number of the ladies from the Dorcas Society began to filter in and could be heard talking amongst themselves.
“Oh, haven’t they done a great job on her hair!” remarked Verna as the girls wandered over to the coffin. Some of them peered in at Grandma Anna’s peaceful face.
“She didn’t have much to work with in the beginning”, said Doris.
“And there she is, wearing her purple beads. Aren’t they the same ones that she wore every day,” chimed in Mabel.
“Don’t you like her knit dress,” remarked Grace. “I don’t think I’ve seen it before.”
At that moment Beatrice stepped over. “Mother bought this dress almost twenty years ago.” she said. “She wanted to be ready for the day when she would need it.”
Just then the girls turned around to see who was sobbing. Doris walked over and put her arm around Marion who was crying her eyes out. “We won’t have her any longer,” she sobbed, “to lead us in prayer at any of our meetings. Who’s going to do it now?”
“Well let’s get her buried first before we think about that” chirped in Mona.
“Come on Marion! Anna would not be pleased to know you are crying so much. Remember she always told us that we should rejoice in death because it’s only through death that each of us will truly meet our Maker”.
“Well, she’s surely with Him now”, Tina announced as Marion struggled to wipe away her tears.
The living room was beginning to fill up with people coming and going all afternoon. Men and women who hadn’t seen Grandma Anna, some for two or three years, came from far and wide to pay their respects. They had come to say good-bye to Grandma Anna and to catch up on local news at the same time. There was something about Grandma Anna that one could never forget once you had met her. She had a deep and abiding faith and an aura of spirituality that seemed to envelop every person who came in contact with her. She was a lady for whom deep respect was afforded by everyone who knew her
The ladies of the Dorcas Society were about to leave just as John B arrived. He wasted no time in making his presence known and was soon heard to say in his booming voice, “I wonder how much she’s left the family”. No one bothered to turn around. Everyone knew John B’s voice. He was the town bachelor who rode about on his bicycle helping the farmers when they needed him. He was a good worker but other than that, social “know-how” was not part of John B’s make-up. He always knew where he could get a good meal. On his way home from work he would often “conveniently” drop in to a home at supper time. Nothing would do but, that he had to be invited to join the family.
Disgusted, the neighbour standing beside him started to walk away but not before the minister who had heard John B’s questioning remark came over to silence him. It was not unusual for John B to speak out as he did. He had never learned to keep his mouth shut at the appropriate time.
Just then the Reverend raised his right hand and asked everyone in the room to remember Anna, each with their own silent prayers after which he pronounced a blessing of his own. “Amen” he said, as the group followed together with a second “Amen”.
The following day at noon hour, the cars were lined up on the roadside waiting to follow the hearse down the road to the cemetery. It was a lengthy procession, for it seemed as though everyone in the neighbourhood had come to bid a final farewell to this lovely old lady, the last old timer of the community.
Since her husband’s death, Grandma Anna had always sat in the front pew of the church. Now her two sons, Waltham, who had come from Halifax and Reginald from Alberta, occupied it. The remaining members of her family sat behind them.
The church which could barely seat a hundred people was filled. So was the balcony. People were standing at the back of the church and in the aisles. A few were gathered outside on the lawn, one or two of the farmers still in their work clothes since they had not had time to go home to change.
This was the church that Grandma Anna’s forebears had built over a century earlier. St. Peters’ Anglican Church which was known for its splendor and elegance had seen many visitors during the course of each year. Though money may have been scarce for a number of things in those early days, one could see upon entering this beautiful edifice that the early settlers had spared nothing to make their house of worship, a House of lasting beauty.
Several large stained-glass windows depicting biblical scenes such as “The Sower” or “Behold, I Stand at the Door and Knock”, caught one’s eye the minute one walked in. These windows were monuments of great beauty and had been dedicated to a number of the early pioneers. And the pews of solid polished oak spoke loudly of the reverence that these people held in their hearts for the wood and trees of their forests. Small wonder that the boys had chosen an oak casket for their mother.
The congregation stood when the casket was rolled up to the front of the church by the pallbearers. As the minister took his place, the choir began to softly sing “Abide with Me”. Reverend Craven’s eulogy was not long for that was the way Grandma Anna had wanted it. She was, after all, a humble woman and had told him when she was alive that whatever he had to say, it was not to be lengthy. As the service came to an end the bell began to toll. It continued ringing while the mourners filed out and followed the hearse on foot, up the road and over to the cemetery where they spread out circling the grave site of Grandma Anna.
As the minister pronounced that final blessing to the dead and the casket was slowly being lowered within the freshly dug grave, a pair of yellow warblers flew onto one of the branches of a nearby tulip tree. They began to warble so loudly that their song brought nothing but joy to all standing around, a song that seemed to be a heavenly benediction to Grandma Anna, one grand old lady and the last of the pioneers.
Note:
I was 11 years old when Grandmother died and I remember well her funeral. I am sorry that her house no longer exists. A cousin lived in it for a few years and it was eventually torn down. But it holds many memories – the row of Jack pines that grew tall along one side of the laneway- and the eerie sound when you heard the wind blowing through them.
I did not like going to Sunday School or church and I used to disappear when it was time to get ready. I would high tail it up the gravel road around the corner to Grandmas on when it was time to get ready for church on the Sundays in springtime-The first pine tree inside the gate had a bough that came straight out for a few feet. I could hoist myself up on it and sit with my legs dangling, a perfect place to observe blue sky the buttercups dancing in the breeze. As I communed with God and nature this ritual fed my soul far more than listening to a stuffy old minister- But too soon I heard my name being called as I was told that it was time to get ready..