Sweet Life (7 page)

Rod sees her first. “We were wondering where you got to. Hear anything more about Mom?”

Naomi heads straight for the window. Lifts her hands to the cold glass. “I fell asleep and you two took off.”

The couch springs groan and Carol stands next to Naomi. “We told you we were going to the cafeteria and you said you didn’t mind. Don’t you remember?”

Naomi swings round. Grabs Carol’s arms and hangs on. “Listen.
We’ve got to save those birds.
”

Doves

My mother left home at the age of fourteen
, shortly after the end of the Second World War. Home was a northern Manitoba farm with a two-room house and outbuildings sagging southward, tipped by the prevailing winds. Although I saw this farm before the collapsing buildings burned to the ground, much of what I learned of Mother’s childhood was passed on to me after her death when relatives began, cautiously at first, to recall anecdotes and names. Mother had seldom mentioned her father, and when she did, she got through the telling quickly, as though mentioning him burnt her tongue. She did tell me the truth about my uncle Matthew, although it took three days before she could manage all the facts.

This story didn’t come from her. It came from all four of my uncles at different times, each detail squeezed out like paint dabs pushed from a tube, until I could visualize the complete picture of the day three of my uncles plotted patricide.

~

Throughout their childhoods and teens,
my uncles fantasized about killing their father. They tossed the idea around while pitching hay:
Let’s stab
him with the pitchfork.
When they drove the cattle home:
Bash him over the head while he’s sleeping, throw the body into Duck River.
Their rage bubbled, hot and steaming as their mother’s borscht.

Grandmother looked after the milking, the poultry, the pigs, the garden and the house. My grandfather put Viktor, the eldest boy, in charge of the other chores. These included lambing, calving, seeding, harvesting and keeping the farm and its equipment in good repair. Grandfather’s job was to maintain a steady supply of homebrew, which he used to stoke his own fiery spirit. He sold the liquor to other farmers, making deals in the churchyard on Sundays after services.

St. Michael the Archangel Russian Orthodox Church had been built by the farmers near a gravel road leading to the hamlet of Sclater. The wooden structure and its freestanding bell tower still stand in the midst of pine and scrub bush, although the boards have warped and the shine on the gold, onion-shaped dome has faded. Brush grows up to the door. But the sun still lights the two stained glass windows.

During the Second World War and for some years afterward, immigrant families filled the church’s interior, forced to press against each other on the short, wooden pews. The flowered babushkas on the women’s heads blazed brighter than the bouquets set by the altar, and the summer’s heat intensified
the barnyard smells the worshippers couldn’t scrub from their pores. Even the incense from the burner couldn’t ameliorate the underlying odour of manure.

On this Sunday, during the summer Viktor turned sixteen, they’d all driven to St. Michael’s, four-year-old Matthew on my grandmother’s lap next to Grandfather in the Fargo truck’s cab. Viktor, Alek and Karl sat on the rough flatbed, hawking up dust while they rattled past spruce, fields and farms.

Viktor didn’t pay much attention to the priest, whose lips moved within the black bib of his beard. My uncle had his eye on thirteen-year-old Sylana, a pretty girl who lived nearby. Grandfather slept through the service, his heavy snores louder than the priest’s voice. No one mentioned the nap afterward; no one would’ve dared.

After the service, Matthew went off to play in the woods, lifting his legs high to keep his boots – hand-me-downs from another family – from slipping off. Grandmother stood in the shade with the other women, most either pregnant or holding babies balanced on their hips. Viktor, Alek and Karl stood with the other young men, shooting the breeze and passing around a couple of cigarettes, pretending not to notice the group of girls who were pretending not to notice them.

Alek jabbed Viktor with his elbow. “I saw you staring at Sylana. I thought your eyes would fall out.”

She must’ve heard her name, because she turned and looked straight at Viktor, then turned to the other girls and said something that made them giggle.

The priest, standing on the step to say goodbye to his congregation, shook my grandfather’s hand last of all. After the priest went back inside, some men joined Grandfather by the Fargo to make arrangements to buy his whiskey, whiskey powerful enough that a lit spoonful disappeared in a white snatch of flame.

Afterward, the family drove home for the same type of meal they’d had for supper the night before, the same meal they’d have later that day: borscht, dark bread and thick slices of lard. Grandfather didn’t eat much; he stoked himself with the spirits he stilled in a hiding place between the house and Duck River. With his head lowered over his soup bowl, he’d look up every so often and glare as though he begrudged my uncles every swallow of their food. He growled off a list of chores for them to do, and then slunk to the bedroom for a nap. Drinking and sleeping took up most of his day, while the rest of the family worked. The only chance my grandmother had to put up her feet was when Grandfather left the house, and even then she kept Matthew as lookout.

As soon as my uncles heard my grandfather snore, they hightailed it to the barn. Viktor, Alek and Karl climbed the inside ladder to the loft; Matthew headed to the sheep pen to visit the lambs. Alek and Karl fell asleep on the scattering of hay still left on the plank floor, while Viktor sat with his back against the wallboards and watched sunlight sift through chinks in the roof and walls. Dust sparkled like floating bits of gold. He faced the open loft door because someone had to keep an eye out. If he’d thought about it in time, he would’ve grabbed one of the books he’d hidden in the tool shed. Some of the words in the book were too hard for him, but he tried to sound them out, the way he’d been taught in the one-roomed schoolhouse. Grandfather had made all his children quit school after grade six, claiming a farmer didn’t need an education.

Viktor had taken the books from someone’s back steps one time when he’d gone to the town of Swan River. He stole every chance he could: nails or tobacco or bootlaces. He didn’t have enough money to buy what he needed, let alone what he wanted. But a few weeks before, when he’d gone into Swan River, the owner of Hank’s General Store had cornered him, shamed him in front of the men hanging around.

“You’re not welcome in here, any more. You pay me for the pocket knife you stole. I know it was you.”

“I never took any knife.”

Hank stood close enough for Viktor to smell the oil Hank used to slick his hair. “The hell you didn’t. Go on, get out.”

Viktor didn’t know how his father learned about the knife, but in the Fargo on the way home, he said, “Hand it over.” With one hand on the steering wheel, he tested the knife’s weight with the other. “Next time,” he said, slipping the knife into his own pants pocket, “don’t get caught.”

Now Viktor watched the big, flat-bottomed clouds drift above the farmhouse, looking like they knew where they were headed and had all the time in the world to get there. Below, Matthew chatted to the lambs, the sheep answered, and farther away, a big hog snuffled and a hen squawked. From the pinewoods along Duck River, mourning doves called:
Who? Who?
Their questions went flying over the meadow and the wheat fields, across the pasture where the cattle grazed by the dugout. And my uncle Viktor answered, “It’s me, Viktor Banchuk. Wait for me, I’m getting out of here.”

The screen door slammed. From the step, my grandfather yelled something over his shoulder to my grandmother. Vik
tor jumped over Alek and rushed to the loft door. Grandfather wasn’t looking toward the barn; he headed in the opposite direction, his black mongrel trotting at his heels. When Viktor
again sat at the wall, Alek was awake and pulling on his sus
penders. Karl slept on, his cap next to his head.

“He’s headed for the shithouse.”

Alek sat next to Viktor at the wall and stretched his legs. “Then he’ll stick his head in the hooch jar.”

Matthew called, “Viktor, I’m coming up!” In a moment he stood at the top of the ladder. Even in his oversized castoffs, he looked like an angel from a storybook: blond hair, long dark lashes framing eyes the same bright blue as Katherine’s.

Katherine had escaped. Older than Viktor, she now worked in Winnipeg and lived with their aunt Sonia. Viktor planned to do the same, if his aunt would allow him. But he kept his plans a secret; if his father found out, he’d take down the rifle at the back door. Every time someone crossed him, my grandfather threatened to shoot that person.

Now Matthew kicked off his boots and snuggled close to Viktor. “How’re the lambs?”

“Good. ’Cept Sofie butt me.”

“Try having a nap.”

“I’m too big for a nap. I’m almost five.”

“Okay. Just lay your head against my arm and rest.”

Alek stared out the loft door. “Farm full of animals, how come all we get is vegetables and bread and soup? The butter and eggs are for selling,
he
says. Stock, too. What does he do with the money?”

Viktor put an arm around Matthew. “Drinks it. Gambles in Swan River with his friends.”

Matthew leaned forward from Viktor’s arm and looked at Alek. “Papa talked really nice to me yesterday. He said, ‘You’re a good boy.’ Then he patted my head. And I told him, ‘You’re not mean when you don’t drink, Papa; you shouldn’t drink.’ He said he couldn’t help it.”

Matthew leaned against Viktor’s arm again, and was soon asleep.

Alek looked at Viktor. “Old man’s nothing but a liar. He can help what he does.” Alek nodded at Matthew. “Hope he has good dreams. Want to hear my good dream? Old man drives the truck off the road and kills himself.”

There were two bedrooms in the farmhouse and a single large bed in each. The boys were forced to share, and Alek was the most restless, thrashing and whimpering, pulling the covers off his brothers. My grandfather often shouted in his sleep or screamed like someone was shoving a knife into him.

Viktor hadn’t told Alek – hadn’t told anyone – about his own nightmares. He’d be walking alone on a country road hemmed by wide ditches. Sunlight gave each bunch of wheat grass, each white chickweed blossom a strange fluorescence. Even dandelion tufts borne by a breeze sparkled in the air. He didn’t know where he was headed, but like a coyote sprung from a trap, he kept a sharp lookout. Then, a sudden shaking of grass stems, the sound of a body sliding across the ditch. And he would bolt, run for his life. The moment he sensed something was about to leap onto his shoulders, he’d waken, his heart pounding.

“Katherine’s lucky. She got away. I bet she and Aunt Sonia eat roast pork every night. Mashed potatoes with gravy.
Pie
.”

Viktor didn’t want to talk about Katherine. He’d let her down.

My grandmother spent a week in Winnipeg nursing Aunt Sonia through pneumonia. Grandfather forced Viktor, Alek and Karl to sleep in the barn, but he let Katherine stay in the house. To my uncles, here was another instance of their father’s arbitrary meanness. Because they couldn’t complain to him, they picked on Katherine, made her cry.

A few years later, she became pregnant and the RCMP charged my grandfather with rape. But the judge let him off. John Marcynuk, sitting as a witness for the defense, lied and said that Katherine slept with all the men in the area. She was thirteen at the time.

Social Services sent her to a place for pregnant girls. One day an unfamiliar car pulled up in the yard and she climbed out, wearing a new dress and carrying a baby. “His name’s Matthew.” Katherine handed the baby to my grandmother.

That was the last my uncles saw of Katherine for more than four years. Viktor was certain at the time she left that Grandfather would take down the rifle by the back door and go after her, all the way to Winnipeg.

Without thinking, Viktor blurted, “I’m next.”

“You’re going to leave?” Alek rocked back and forth. “You’ll forget all about us like Katherine did.”

“What are you talking about? Mama gets letters.”

“Once-in-a-blue-moon letters.”

“When Matthew starts school, I’ll go to Winnipeg. Maybe Aunt Sonia will let me stay with her. I could work on the CPR, drive trains. Once I save enough money, the rest of you can come live with me. Mama, too.”

“Viktor, you know women can’t leave their husbands. And there aren’t any railroad jobs. The soldiers took them all.”

“Then I’ll go to British Columbia and join a logging crew. And you won’t be alone. You’ll have Mama, Matthew and Karl.”

“Karl punched my arm yesterday when I accidentally bumped into him. Gave me a huge bruise. He’s getting mean as the old man.”

Then, as if he’d heard them, my grandfather started his favourite song, a sad tune from the old country.

Alek jumped to his feet and rushed to the ladder. He re
turned with the axe they used for chopping firewood. He looked at Viktor.

Viktor laid Matthew onto the floor, careful not to wake him, then strode to Alek and gripped his shoulder. “
You’ll do it
?”