Cool Water (20 page)

He wakes from a sound sleep to find old George Varga staring down at him.

“So, young Torgeson,” George says, holding out his hand to help Lee to his feet.

As he gets up, Lee tries to hide the fact that his body is badly hurting. He's glad that George recognizes him, so he doesn't have to explain who he is.

The horse is nowhere in sight.

George sees Lee looking and points around the side of the church. “Damn bugger's eating my grass,” he says. Then he waves his hand in dismissal and adds, “Saves me mowing.”

Lee senses George waiting for an explanation, so he offers, “I came across the sand.” As he says it, he realizes it's not much of an explanation.

“From your place?” George asks.

Lee nods, expecting disbelief, but George says, “Well, better come on over to the house, have some lunch. Fill the belly before you go. Long way back home, long ride ahead of you.” The words
long ride
resonate but are quickly replaced by thoughts of food.

Lee follows George through the churchyard gate and across the road to the original Varga homestead, where he knows George lives with his sister Anna. As they pass through the trees, he sees a mobile home with a framed porch built onto the side and a carefully tended flower bed in front. The old farmhouse is still standing, but it's badly weathered and not in use any more. It's rumoured that George is filthy rich, but you'd never know it from the twenty-year-old pickup truck parked in the yard. Lee takes note of the tow hitch and looks around for a stock trailer, thinking about a ride home, but he doesn't see one.

George takes him into the porch, which turns out to be a summer kitchen, calling out to Anna that they have a visitor from down south, young Lee Torgeson—remember him, Lester's boy? “Get the boy something to eat, Anna,” George says. “He's come all this way on a horse, just like the old days.”

Then Anna speaks to George in Hungarian. It's intimidating, having her speak without Lee knowing what she's saying. She could be telling George to get him the hell out, for all he knows. But no, she's sending him into the trailer and down the hall to the washroom, and when he gets back she's already got food on the table: bread and cheese and cold meat, pickles and sliced tomatoes. A plate filled with cookies and cake squares.

“Sit, sit,” Anna says in English. “All that way on a horse. You must be hungry.”

“Like the Perry cowboys, eh,” George says to Anna.

Lee isn't sure what George means, something to do with the legendary ranch, he supposes, how everything was done horseback in those days. Much of the pastureland in the district had been part of the original Perry lease, and there are old black-and-white photographs in the town hall. He shifts his weight on a wooden chair, trying to relieve the pressure on his bruises and saddle burns. His mouth is watering, but he waits until Anna offers him the plate of cheese and cold cuts. When she does, he digs in.

“We ate already,” George says, although he takes a piece of cake in his big farmer's hand. Lee notices that he's missing a finger.

“So,” George says, his mouth full of cake, “you're doing the hundred-mile ride, just like Ivan Dodge. Hundred miles on the same horse. Have to be. No fresh horse for you here.”

Lee is hardly listening. He's busy making himself the best-looking sandwich he's ever seen, the kind Astrid used to call a Dagwood.

“You know the story, I suppose,” George says.

Lee looks at him then, and George can tell he doesn't know what he's talking about.

“Lester never told you about that race?” George asks. “Before I was born. The riders changed horses—one of them anyway—right out there where the church is.”

Lee tries to remember, but he doesn't think he's heard anything about such a race. He would have remembered a story with horses in it.

So George tells him. Anna knows the story too, and nods throughout the telling. How a cowboy named Ivan Dodge and another hand from the ranch came through the dunes and Ivan Dodge was well ahead of his competitor, and they were supposed to switch to fresh horses but Ivan shook his head when one of his crew led his change horse up and then he loped off on his Arab horse and rode his way to victory. How the other cowboy's horse tied up and he couldn't finish the race.

“There was betting that day,” George says. “Not many won money. Only those with horse sense. They say that's inherited, horse sense. My old man travelled all the way to watch the finish out by your place, by that old buffalo stone. He didn't like to admit he bet on the wrong horse, but that's what he did. He had no horse sense.”

“Get the book, George,” Anna says. “Show him the picture.”

Anna takes away Lee's empty plate and gets him a teacup. “Tea is good on a hot day,” she says. “You wouldn't think so, but it is.”

For some reason Lee tells her about the Bedouins and their tea ceremony. “They drink it sweet,” Lee says, “and if they're outside they pour a few drops in the sand. It's a gift to the desert.” Once he's said it he feels embarrassed, but Anna looks interested.

“Is that so?” she says. “They sweeten with honey, I suppose.”

George returns with an old album filled to bursting with newspaper clippings, scraps of paper and photographs. He lays it on the table and flips through the pages, some of them falling free of the binding, and searches for something. He holds a magnifying glass over the pages as he looks. He shows Lee pictures of dead people in their burial attire, taken, George says, so their families could remember them. “Most dressed up they'd ever been,” he says, “so good time for a picture.”

“History,” Anna says, indicating the book. “Varga history.”

George points out a photograph of the stone foundation of a building. “The church,” he says. “Soon as my old man got the house done, he started on the church. The house will be gone soon, next big wind, I suppose, but the church is still there. Better building. Or maybe God looks after it, eh.”

As George flips through the scrapbook, Lee imagines the rash of activity that must have gone into building a community from scratch.

George finds what he's looking for, a newspaper article. He slides the book toward Lee, indicating that he should take the magnifying glass as well.

“His eyes are young, he doesn't need that,” Anna says, but Lee takes it anyway because the article is faded.

It relates the details of the race: the two cowboys, the hundred-mile horse, said to be an Arab.
It is rumoured,
the article says,
that money exchanged hands, although
no man is owning up to either winning or losing, perhaps
because of the local women's well-known disapproval of
gambling.
The way the article is written reminds Lee of Lester's old books. He studies the grainy picture of Ivan Dodge, who resembles a movie cowboy with his young good looks, his hat and his fringed chaps. Lee examines the faces of the people standing around him, men in old-fashioned clothing, looking as though they're dressed for church. He wonders if one of them might be Lester's father, but none looks familiar. He scans the article until he finds the name of the other cowboy, the one who lost, Henry Merchant. He doesn't recognize either name, Dodge or Merchant. They'd had their moment of fame, he supposes, and then left the district like so many others.

Anna takes Lee's empty cup from the table and carries it to the sink.

“George,” she says, “when are you going to get me that dishwasher?”

“Waiting for a sale,” he says. He leans toward Lee conspiratorially and says, “I already got a good dishwasher.”

“What's he saying there?” Anna asks.

Lee laughs and decides it's time to go. “Thanks for the lunch,” he says, and pushes himself away from the table. George rises too and Anna comes to see him out the door. He's thinking that George must have some kind of trailer for hauling animals and is about to ask—not because of the long ride, he'll say, but because he has work to do—when Anna warns, “You be careful on that horse. Look in the graveyard across the road. Pete Varga. Died when he got bucked off and hit his head on a rock.” Anna shakes her head. “Such a tragedy.”

“Don't worry,” George says, “he's not going to get bucked off. Not a horseman like this one.”

Lee says, “I don't know, fifty miles might be far enough.” He waits for a response, hoping, but hope evaporates when George says, “You ride out, you have to ride back. How else do you get home? Now that you got food in the belly, good to go again. Let that Araby horse set his own pace and you'll be fine.”

Lee thanks Anna for the lunch and finds himself walking with George back to the churchyard, knowing that there's no other way, he'll have to saddle up and ride the remaining fifty miles like Ivan Dodge did, no matter how sore he is, no matter how much it hurts to climb back in the saddle. He can already feel the pain of the horse moving under him once again, the seams of his jeans rubbing once more against raw skin. He badly regrets his decision to ride any farther than Hank's pasture.

“You didn't bring no hat?” George asks.

“It was dark when I started,” Lee says.

George is wearing an old felt cowboy hat, battered and darkened around the band with years of sweat and grease. He takes it off, exposing a white forehead and thick grey hair, and hands it to Lee. “You better take this,” he says. “You've got enough sunburn on that face for one day.”

Lee doesn't really want to put George's dirty old hat on his head, but he takes it anyway because he knows George is right. He tries it on and it fits well enough to stay in place.

“I'll get it back to you,” Lee says.

“Never mind,” says George. “Time for a new one. You throw that one away when you get home.”

The horse lifts his head and whinnies when George and Lee enter the churchyard. Lee offers the horse another drink and then tacks him up, and when there's nothing else to do, he mounts once again. The saddle doesn't feel as bad as he thought it would.

“So where'd you get this horse, anyway?” George asks. “Lester never had no horse like this. Just those heavy horses, eh, good for work.”

Lee tells him. How the horse just wandered into his yard.

“Huh,” George says. “Well, no one claims him, I guess he'll be yours.”

“I don't think so,” Lee says. “Someone will come looking for him.”

“Tell you what,” George says. “You ride the whole hundred miles and I'll give you fifty bucks.”

George holds up his hand and Lee doesn't know what to do other than shake it.

“All right, then,” George says. “Straight south. That's the way the Perry cowboys went. Good flatland. Won't be as hard going as what you've come through. Maybe someone will put your picture in the paper, eh.”

“I hope not,” Lee says. He tips his hat to George, and once they've crossed the road he lets the horse move into a trot. He doesn't give the fifty dollars another thought, and he tries not to think of the distance between here and home.

It feels better than he predicted it would to be moving again.

Ed's Window

Willard is certain that Marian is watching him through the living room window of the house—the window that Willard will always think of as “Ed's window.” When they were building the house, Ed had gone to the drugstore and bought a magazine that featured an article on the latest in home design. This was completely out of character, but Willard later learned that Ed had marriage in mind and he wanted to build a house that would attract a woman. Although the house was essentially a prefab from the lumberyard in Swift Current, Ed had insisted they replace the standard living room window that came in the package with a larger window that he'd seen in the magazine.

There'd been no end of trouble with Ed's window. The lumberyard had to special-order and Ed went to the lumberyard every day to see if it was in. He happened to be there when it arrived, broken. Because Ed had helped to unpack the crate, the insurance company tried to use that to renege on its responsibility. The disagreement escalated to include the shipper and its insurance company, and the manufacturer. Ed's position was that he wasn't paying a cent for a broken window, no matter whose fault it was. Eventually, there was a settlement, but when the second window arrived, this time intact, the carpenters broke it when they were installing it, and a third window had to be ordered. Again, Ed held to his position, not one red cent, and the lumberyard was forced to order and pay for a third window. This one was installed without incident, but over the entire first year that Ed and Willard lived in the new house, Ed fought with the lumberyard because the window iced up on the inside in the winter, and when the ice melted in the spring, water leaked into the wall and the Gyproc got wet and disintegrated. Ed could probably have fixed the window and re-plastered the wall himself, but it was a matter of principle. And there was some urgency for Ed, because he had plans. The window had to be right before he went looking for his bride, who eventually turned out to be Marian.

To this day, Willard does not know how they met. He only knows that Ed went out all dressed up one day in January—a good month for a new start—and was gone for the better part of a week. Willard was left alone, not really worried because Ed had always done things without telling anyone. Ed said nothing when he got home about where he'd been, but Willard knew that Ed was just dying for him to ask, which was reason enough for Willard not to. Ed made several other forays out into the world that winter and spring, in between rounds of lodging complaints about the window, and in July—once the window was resealed and the wall plaster was sanded and painted—he showed up with Marian and introduced her as his wife. Willard said,
Pleased to meet you,
and he remembers that Marian said the same, only she sounded genuinely pleased, which was somehow surprising.