Patterns of Swallows (5 page)

So the farm land was taken care
of. And the house was still standing. But that was about all that
could be said for it.

Ruth felt as near crying as
never happened when she saw what she was up against. The steps to
the porch were rotting. There was hardly a window left intact. The
front door was off its hinges. The interior walls had yawning holes
the size of a man's large boot from one of the more destructive
squatters. Some walls had no panelling at all, leaving dirty
insulation to sag out without restraint. Insects of more varieties
than Ruth knew existed had overrun the place. The mice gloried in
their heyday as lords of the manor.

It was impossible. The whole
thing was utterly impossible. At least for her and at least right
then. She'd have to sleep on it, and see how things looked to her in
the morning.

Her first night back, she found
her mother's few remaining belongings stored in the attic and rolled
up in a quilt on the bare, hardwood floor of the cleanest room she
could find (which was only filthy). The quilt reeked of mothballs.
In the morning, she'd have to see if the old wringer washer was still
in the washing shed by the house. But there was nothing she could do
about the mothballs or the dirt or the hard floor that night. As
exhausted as she was from the bus ride into Arrowhead and the long
walk out to the farm from the depot with her one suitcase, sleep was
in short supply.

*
* *

When word got around town that
Ruth was back at the Chavinski farm, it was the Saturday after Ruth's
arrival that Bo Weaver, Philippa and Mrs. Handy, and a few of Bo's
friends came out for a work bee. Even Wynn came and stayed an hour
or two. Ruth had been on the farm by herself for three days, and the
human contact was more than welcome. As was the volunteer labour.

Cleaning was one of Ruth's
least-favourite jobs, but she wasn't much use at the bigger jobs.
She had to let the men handle them while she, Wynn, Philippa and her
mother, and the other women cleaned.

Bo's boss at the apple packing
shed, Eddie Hoffstetter, came along and brought his wife plus a few
of the other apple shed employees. There was the prevalent party
atmosphere usual to work bees: friendly insults back and forth
between the men and small gossip and comfortable commonplaces amongst
the women. Ruth had no refreshments to serve, but Mrs. Hoffstetter,
anticipating that, had brought sweet apple cider and cookies for
everyone, and most of the workers brought lunch pails and thermoses,
expecting to make a full day of it.

By suppertime Saturday, most of
the big jobs were finished. The house was bare, but clean and
respectably fixed-up.

Ruth never knew for sure who to
thank for the thought and the impetus behind the work bee, so she
thanked all the volunteers repeatedly, especially Bo as the most
likely instigator.

After that Saturday, it began to
feel as though she lived somewhere again. There were a few pieces of
old furniture in one of the sheds that could be rescued and restored.
She found the old bike in the barn and discovered that it still
worked with a little greasing-up. She'd need something for
transportation back and forth into town if she was going to find a
job. And she desperately needed a job.

She would have felt much easier
in her mind at that moment if she could have known all about Jim and
Morning Glory Metzke. But then, none of us can know the future.

The morning after Marjorie
Trapwell's wedding dance, the moment Ruth was awake, she knew trouble
had found her.

It was an unfamiliar feeling but
one she could immediately put a name to though she tried hard not to
put the name to it. The sensation was as if some lighter-than-air
substance had invaded her entire body and settled down into her
stomach. To her still sleep-frowsed mind the image appeared of being
trapped inside a soap bubble, all shiningness and rainbow iridescence
in the sunlight, carried off against her knowledge and will wherever
the breeze took her. It was a very helpless feeling but a nearly
irresistible one.

She got up and dressed for work
and tried to think about something else. But nothing else to think
about occurred to her just then. At least, not that she could think
about for very long. Her thoughts continuously returned to the
lighter-than-air sensation.

She didn't see Graham again for
more than two weeks. She wasn't trying to keep track of the days,
but when he showed up one evening for supper at the Morning Glory,
she knew it had been over two weeks since Marjorie's wedding.

Graham was
with Bernie Jansen and two girls Ruth didn't recognize. She imagined
they were both high-school girls, a little young for Graham and
Bernie. But that didn't stop the two men, both of whom had an arm
around a pair of young, high-school shoulders as they entered the
cafe.

The spirits of the foursome
seemed to be exceptionally high that night, and when Ruth came to
hand them menus, she knew why. The sour and unmistakable smell of
liquor was apparent when she leaned across to the men's side of the
table to wipe off a crumb. And it was only five o' clock in the
evening. This was a side of Graham she hadn't seen before.

He greeted her jovially enough
but without any apparent memory of the four dances they'd had
together. Had it really only been two weeks ago? At times it felt
like years and at times it felt like days. Just then, it felt like
another lifetime ago. The two-week-old soap bubble evaporated in
mid-air, splattering her unceremoniously onto hard ground.

She ignored the noisy teasing
the men were doing and the giggling of the girls and went to wait on
another table while the group decided on their orders.

They were hard to ignore. All
over the cafe, people were turning to look in the direction of the
louder-than-normal men's voices and the squealing female ones.

She was back at Graham's table
to take their orders just as Mrs. Handy and Philippa arrived and took
a seat at the counter.

Every Monday, the widowed mother
and her daughter came to the Morning Glory for a dinner out. It was
their weekly treat – a chance to get out of the house and have
someone else cook for them. Every Monday, they entered the cafe like
a doe and her fawn, unobtrusively, with cautious eyes, looking from
side to side, on the ware for signs of danger. But that was silly.
It was the Morning Glory. Of course it was safe.

"Are you ready to order?"
Ruth asked Graham and his company, carefully avoiding Graham's eyes.

The men ordered for themselves
and the girls, and Ruth left to put in their orders with Jim in the
kitchen.

Just as Ruth returned to
Graham's table with cutlery and condiments, the high-school-aged girl
sitting across from Graham was saying in a tone that was probably
much louder than she realized (she didn't smell like liquor, but
everything else about her showed signs of recent imbibing), "She's
retarded, isn't she?"

"Nah," Graham answered
her, also plainly audibly. "Philippa's not retarded exactly.
She's just slow."

Ruth slapped cutlery on the
table, but the conversation didn't alter from its course.

"Hey, Philippa!"
Bernie called to the large girl's back at the counter, his words
favouring a tendency to slurriness. "You're not retarded, are
you? Marti here thinks you're retarded. Why don't you come over
here and tell her you're not retarded?"

Philippa and her mother kept
their eyes fixed forward, turned to stone.

The ketchup
bottle came down hard on the table, not because Graham and his ...
friends
... were ever going to get to use it but as an attention-getter.

"You're not getting served
here tonight," Ruth told them, trying to keep her tone low and
even.

"What? Wha'd'y'mean? We
already ordered?" Bernie protested.

"I don't care. You've been
drinking. You're disturbing our other customers. We don't have to
serve anyone who's been drinking," Ruth told them. She didn't
know if it was true or not. It didn't matter. It was true they
weren't getting served at the Morning Glory that night. If ever
again. That much she knew.

"Why?
Just because your friend's a
retard
?
That means we can't get the food we ordered?" That was Bernie
again.

"Get out! Now!" Ruth
ordered. She'd stopped trying to keep her tone low and even.

Glo was at Ruth's elbow before
anyone had a chance to say anything else.

"What's the problem?"
she said, not to Ruth but to the four at the table.

"Your waitress is kicking
us out," Bernie answered.

"Then I suggest you git,"
she said. She didn't need to ask any questions. She knew Ruth.

"Oh yeah? What about the
customer's always right and all that? I want to speak to your
manager? I want to file a complaint against your waitress. She'll
serve retards but not good, paying customers like us." Bernie
laughed in a fuzzy kind of way. He was beginning to enjoy himself.

"I am the manager, and
whatever Ruth's told you to do is what you'll do."

"C'mon, Bernie. Let's just
go," Graham said, already on his feet and trying to pry up
Bernie by his arm.

"No way! I don't have to
leave. It's a free country. I demand service. I want the food I
ordered."

"You
can get him outta here! And I mean
right
now!" Glo was never one to worry about watching her tone.

Graham succeeded in dragging
Bernie to his feet and hauled him for the door, the sobering girls
following awkwardly.

"HEY! RETARD!"
Bernie fired a parting shot from the sidewalk back through the open
door and kicked the door shut in one last attempt to prove that he
wasn't beaten.

Ruth went back to tell Jim to
cancel the four orders. He was in the act of dishing the food onto
the plates, but without a word, he fired the food into the garbage
can. From back in the kitchen, he hadn't witnessed the scene in the
restaurant, but he was a man of few words. He wouldn't waste some of
his precious store to ask Ruth questions he didn't need to. He could
tell that her voice was shaking. Glo would tell him all about it
later. Whatever it was, Ruth was in the right. That was all he
needed to know for now. He gave her his support silently with his
eyes.

Ruth was especially attentive to
Philippa and Mrs. Handy that evening, going out of her way not to
avoid them, making sure they had everything they wanted, trying hard
for their sakes to appear normal. It seemed to her that the best
thing to do would be to pretend nothing had happened. As obvious as
the pretence was. Some experiences didn't need mentioning, even by
sympathetic parties. The two finished their food quietly, heads
down, and left the cafe as soon as they could.

When Glo heard the whole story,
she was afraid they'd never be back, but there they were in their
usual spot at the counter the next Monday.

Surprisingly, Graham came in
later that week. He sat in Ruth's section, but she bribed the other
waitress, Phoebe, to wait on his table. When Ruth had to pass his
table, she looked up and over his head. She sensed that he was
trying to signal her with his eyes, but he wasn't about to get the
chance, that was one sure thing.

Graham came in the next week, as
well. He sat in Ruth's section again, and she repeated her strategy.
This time he touched her arm as she made her way past his table with
her eyes high. She wouldn't have gone near enough for touching if
she had any choice, but there was no help for it. She had to get
past that table in the crowded restaurant somehow.

In spite of herself, she glanced
down at him when he touched her arm. It was pure reflex that she
would have controlled if it wasn't involuntary.

"Ruth, I wanted to say I
was sorry ..." Graham started to say, but she cut him off.

"We're busy tonight. I
don't have time," she said and walked away.

After Graham had gone, Phoebe
handed her a note.

"I was supposed to give
this to you," was all the explanation she had.

Curiosity
got the better of Ruth. She opened it and read,
I
said I was sorry. Are you never going to talk to me again?

Graham was in a few days later.
It was the breakfast shift, and Phoebe wasn't working that morning.
Ruth had the waitressing to herself.

"Would you like to see a
breakfast menu?" she asked Graham as though he was a customer
who had wandered in from off the street, maybe a stranger in town.
Actually, she was friendlier to customers who wandered in off the
street. She looked over Graham's left shoulder when she handed him
the menu. If she once looked in his face, she knew it would be only
a matter of time until it was all up with her.