It was later than one o’clock when the truck came back. The tarpaulin was over the back, which meant there was meat in it. My mother had to heat dinner up all over again. Henry and my father had changed from their bloody overalls into ordinary working overalls in the barn, and they washed their arms and necks and faces at the sink, and splashed water on their hair and combed it. Laird lifted his arm to show off a streak of blood. “We shot old Flora,” he said, “and cut her up in fifty pieces.”
“Well I don’t want to hear about it,” my mother said. “And don’t come to my table like that.”
My father made him go and wash the blood off.
We sat down and my father said grace and Henry pasted his chewing-gum on the end of his fork, the way he always did; when he took it off he would have us admire the pattern. We began to pass the bowls of steaming, overcooked vegetables. Laird looked across the table at me and said proudly, distinctly, “Anyway it was her fault Flora got away.”
“What?” my father said.
“She could of shut the gate and she didn’t. She just open’ it up and Flora run out.”
“Is that right?” my father said.
Everybody at the table was looking at me. I nodded, swallowing food with great difficulty. To my shame, tears flooded my eyes.
My father made a curt sound of disgust. “What did you do that for?”
I did not answer. I put down my fork and waited to be sent from the table, still not looking up.
But this did not happen. For some time nobody said anything, then Laird said matter-of-factly, “She’s crying.”
“Never mind,” my father said. He spoke with resignation, even good humour, the words which absolved and dismissed me for good. “She’s only a girl,” he said.
I didn’t protest that, even in my heart. Maybe it was true.
POSTCARD
Yesterday afternoon, yesterday, I was going along the street to the Post Office, thinking how sick I was of snow, sore throats, the whole dragged-out tail-end of winter, and I wished I could pack off to Florida, like Clare. It was Wednesday afternoon, my half-day. I work in King’s Department Store, which is nothing but a ready-to-wear and dry goods, in spite of the name. They used to have groceries, but I can just barely recall that. Momma used to take me in and set me on the high stool and old Mr. King would give me a handful of raisins and say, I only give them to the pretty girls. They took the groceries out when he died, old Mr. King, and it isn’t even King’s Department Store any more, it belongs to somebody named Kruberg. They never come near it themselves, just send Mr. Hawes in for manager. I run the upstairs, Children’s Wear, and put in the Toyland at Christmas. I’ve been there fourteen years and Hawes doesn’t pick on me, knowing I wouldn’t take it if he did.
It being Wednesday the wickets in the Post Office were closed, but I had my key. I unlocked our box and took out the Jubilee paper, in Momma’s name, the phone bill and a postcard I very nearly missed. I looked at the picture on it first and it showed me palm trees, a hot blue sky, the front of a motel with a sign out front in the shape of a big husky blonde creature, lit up with neon I suppose at night. She was saying Sleep at my place—that is, a balloon with those words in it came out of her mouth. I turned it over and read, I didn’t sleep at her place though it was too expensive. Weather could not be better. Mid-seventies. How is the winter treating you in Jubilee? Not bad I hope. Be a good girl. Clare. The date was ten days back. Well, sometimes postcards are slow, but I bet what happened was he carried this around in his pocket a few days before he remembered to mail it. It was my only card since he left for Florida three weeks ago, and here I was expecting him back in person Friday or Saturday. He made this trip every winter with his sister Porky and her husband, Harold, who lived in Windsor. I had the feeling they didn’t like me, but Clare said it was my imagination. Whenever I had to talk to Porky I would make some mistake like saying something was irrevelant to me when I know the word is irrelevant, and she never let on but I thought about it afterwards and burned. Though I know it serves me right for trying to talk the way I never would normally talk in Jubilee. Trying to impress her because she’s a MacQuarrie, after all my lecturing Momma that we’re as good as them.
I used to say to Clare, write me a letter while you’re away, and he would say, what do you want me to write about? So I told him to describe the scenery and the people he met, anything would be a pleasure for me to hear about, since I had never been further away from home than Buffalo, for pleasure (I won’t count that train trip when I took Momma to Winnipeg to see relatives). But Clare said, I can tell you just as well when I get back. He never did, though. When I saw him again I would say, well, tell me all about your trip and he would say, what do you want me to tell? That just aggravated me, because how would I know?
I saw Momma waiting for me, watching through the little window in the front door. She opened the door when I turned in our walk and called out, “Watch yourself, its slippery. The milkman nearly took a header this morning.”
“There’s days when I think I wouldn’t mind breaking a leg,” I said, and she said, “Don’t say things like that, its just asking for punishment.”
“Clare sent you a postcard,” I said.
“Oh, he did not!” She turned it over and said, “Addressed to you, just as I thought.” But she was smiling away. “I don’t care for the picture he picked but maybe you don’t get much choice down there.”
Clare was probably a favourite with old ladies from the time he could walk. To them he was still a nice fat boy, so mannerly, not stuck-up in spite of being a MacQuarrie, and with a way of teasing that perked them up and turned them pink. They had a dozen games going, Momma and Clare, that I could never keep up with. One was him knocking at the door and saying something like, “Good-evening, ma’am, I just wondered if I could interest you in a course in body development I’m selling to put myself through college.” And Momma would swallow and put on a stern face and say, “Look here, young man do I look like I need a course in body development?” Or he would look doleful and say, “Ma’am, I’m here because I’m concerned about your soul.” Momma would roar laughing. “You be concerned about your own,” she said, and fed him chicken dumplings and lemon meringue pie, all his favourites. He told her jokes at the table I never thought she’d listen to. “Did you hear about this old gentleman married a young wife and he went to the doctor? Doctor he says I’m having a bit of trouble—” “Stop it,” Momma said—but she waited till he was through—“you are just embarrassing Helen Louise.” I have got rid of the Louise on the end of my name everywhere but at home. Clare picked it up from Momma and I told him I didn’t care for it but he went right on. Sometimes I felt like their child, sitting between him and Momma with both of them joking and enjoying their food and telling me I smoked too much and if I didn’t straighten up I’d get permanent round shoulders. Clare was—is—twelve years older than I am and I don’t ever remember him except as a grown-up man.