Who by Fire (11 page)

She looked at him. She did not say no.

“If you’re not here that day,” he said, “I’ll assume you’ve made your decision not to see me anymore. Unless I hear differently after that, I’ll leave you alone.”

Right then, even before she left his company, she was planning a strategy for Monday. Not one bit of the reluctance she claimed to have entered into it.

She gave his hand a quick squeeze and went to the car. She felt nervous suddenly and looked in all directions, as if all the eyes of the community were watching. She saw a motion along the nearest coulee edge, maybe a crow’s wing or the black tail of a horse flashing. She drove away, afraid to look in the rear-view.

Tom was wishing Billy was home. He would have been excited to see the expert, Dr. Hemmel, holding a silver bottle up like a priest with his chalice. He’d done something to break its seal and let it fill with air. Tom would have enjoyed explaining it to his son.

Dr. Hemmel was an odd man, all business and rude. He was about five and a half feet tall, with a funny crown of salt-and-pepper hair shaped out to a point in the front. From some angles, he looked like he had a little ship on his head. The scientist had shown scant interest in Tom when Lance Evert had introduced them and kept his hands in his overcoat pockets. Maybe Hemmel thought Tom went around covered in pig shit. Ella wasn’t there. She’d gone to town again; her mother had phoned to say Billy wanted her. When the bottle was filled and capped, Hemmel spoke, and Lance Evert wrote
something down in a scribbler. Using a fat grease pen, Hemmel wrote #1 on the bottle’s silver side.

“We’re done here,” he said.

“I see you picked a day when it’s not stinking,” Tom said to the two of them.

“We did not pick the day,” said the scientist unpleasantly. “This is the day I could be here.”

“I also see the burning pit isn’t burning.”

The scientist swung a look at Lance Evert.

“It won’t be a fair test of anything,” Tom said.

“I’ll be testing again tomorrow,” said Hemmel. “Then I have to return east.”

“Jim dandy. Pontius Pilate washed his hands.”

“We have a full day of tests. Let’s get moving.” Hemmel said this to Lance Evert, then went to the truck and let himself in the passenger side.

Tom had been expecting more and he wasn’t sure what. Glass globes? Copper pots lit from underneath? Bubbles racing down tubes?

He followed Lance to the truck. “Who ordered this air study?” he asked. “Was it Comstock?”

“I think it was the government. But Aladdin was willing to go along with it.”

“I imagine Aladdin had no choice if the government told them to. But I bet Aladdin got to pick the day.”

“It’s like Dr. Hemmel said. It’s the day he could be here. It wouldn’t have made any difference if we’d picked it. It’s not as if we know what this plant or the weather’s going to do one day to the next.”

Tom laughed. It was a good answer. Hemmel and Evert had come in a company pickup, and Tom was looking at the rear window, at Hemmel’s head inside. Suddenly the scientist jerked sideways and
thumped on the truck’s horn. Tom’s old dog sleeping in a shadow came up barking.

Evert had his hand on the door handle.

“That’s not true of the burning pit, is it?” Tom said. “You guys fire that up when you please. Today, you chose not to.”

Evert didn’t answer, and Tom left it at that. He didn’t want to hear the scientist hit the horn again, in case it made him angry enough to jerk open the door and tell the little prick to mind his manners.

Driving home from the Lower Place in the afternoon, Tom saw the Aladdin pickup by the old schoolhouse. Hemmel was holding up another steel bottle. Ahead, Tom could see the black smoke from the plant’s burning pit coasting over the rises toward them. He could smell and taste it. He smiled to think of the bottle tasting it too.

It was the Sunday night before her visit with Lance Evert, and Ella was thankful Billy was in town. The smell was the usual one but had a texture, like wads of tissue winding in your nostrils. In the early hours, the plant siren howled for the first time ever, a sound that rose and swooped and did not stop for a long time. The flare was huge and seemed to move in time to the siren.

Donna, who was not the type to cry, was crying. Jeannie called her a baby, and Ella told her older daughter to shut up, words she never used. Tom went outside and came back briefly to say that the first of the sows was about to farrow. He stayed out for more than an hour, until Ella feared he had been knocked out or even killed by gas. She watched out the window until she saw his lantern pick up and move.

Then Tom was in the porch and calling her. He’d left the porch light off because he carried the lantern. Its upward light made him ghost faced.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s terrible out there. You and the girls have to go.”

“Why doesn’t he phone us? Why is nobody telling us what we’re supposed to do?”

“Don’t wait on them. Just take the girls and go.”

“You should go too. It’s not like you’re any stronger when it comes to gas.”

“I have a sow to look after. She’s lying down and ready. I want to see her farrow.”

“That’s stupid!”

He laughed. In the yellow light, his red eyes looked devilish. “This plant makes us stupider every day,” he said.

She would have argued more but he left, slamming the door too hard. She did as he said, roused the girls and loaded them into the car.

“What about Dad?” Jeannie said.

“He said he’s not coming.”

“Why?”

“His sow is farrowing.”

Donna was crying again. “Why is this happening?”

They could see across the yard where Tom had set his lantern on the ground outside the pigpen. Jeannie banged the window with her fist. Ella said nothing. She backed the car from its spot and pushed the pedal so hard the back tires spun before they caught. She looked once in the rear-view at Tom’s light, then drove. The road and fields were bright but sapped of their real colour. Everything had turned the yellow of sulphur. She told her daughters to hold their breaths as long as they could. Then she gunned it.

In the dawn light, Tom was reaching his pitchfork into the mouth of the pigpen. The sow snorted at him. He fished with the tines beside her pale flank, where the living piglets were hooked to her teats. He
drew the fork back and brought another body to the light, turned and tossed it to the top of the dung heap. There were five of them now, sprawled pink, new, and dead on the brown. There was at least one more dead one inside.

He thought last night’s disaster merited a visit from Dietz, but the vehicle that came was Evert’s. Tom went back to fishing with the pitchfork as the car approached from behind. Its pint-size engine kicked a couple of times and died. He hoped the dog would growl, but he did not even bark. Tom had the last dead pig on his fork, waiting. When he heard Evert’s footsteps, he threw it up with the others.

“Half a litter of twelve,” Tom said. “That’s my profit on the shit pile.”

Tom took his flashlight out of his coat pocket and shone the light into the hole, though he was certain he had them all. “I watched them being born. The ones that died took a breath and that was it. They smothered.”

“What time?”

“I don’t think it matters what time.”

“And your family?”

Tom straightened his back. He pushed the tines against the ground, put his gloved hands over the knob end. “You care so much about my family, it took you until now to get here.”

“I wasn’t on night shift.”

Now that Tom was looking at Evert, he saw that he was upset. Grey in the face.

“So what happened?” Tom asked him.

“There was an accident.”

“What kind of accident?”

“We lost a man.”

“Christ almighty.”

Evert’s mouth worked but made no words.

“So a man was killed by gas last night and still no one came down here or even phoned. That proves how much you bastards care.” Tom poked the fork at the shit pile. “Those could have been kids instead of pigs.”

Evert swayed as if his balance was lost. His eyes looked elsewhere when he said, “I do care.”

He turned and took a step toward his car. The dog was at his side, nose up, tail whipping.

“I have to check the Gerstens and the Courts,” Evert said, seemingly to the dog.

“You going to admit your plant killed these pigs?”

Evert went the rest of the way to his car and opened its door.

Tom leaned over the fence and yelled, “You tell Dietz I want an autopsy on these pigs! You tell him that!”

Ella woke up beside Billy in her parents’ guest bed. It was Monday morning, and Ella made everyone’s breakfast before the girls went off to school. Then she left Billy with her mother and drove in the direction of home. Two miles from the farm, she turned south, then made one more turn toward Bauers’. This time she parked between the caragana rows. The frost was not yet out of the ground and the old garden plot held her.

Back and forth Ella walked where once there had been rows of potatoes, peas, and beans. Dora had tried corn one year, and it grew tall but the ears would not fill. Ella wished to sing to herself, and the only song that came to mind was “The Tennessee Waltz.” “I was waltzing with my darling …” After the appointed time had passed, and another hour, she told herself aloud, “Lance is not coming.” He had only said what it would mean if Ella chose not to come. Maybe he was busy at work, or maybe it was the same message in reverse:
that he did not want to see her anymore. She waited fifteen more minutes before she circled back around the plant and approached home the usual way.

Tom’s truck was not in the yard. She saw the dead piglets on the manure pile, the peculiar colour grabbing at her eyes. She went into the house and waited. When he drove in, Tom didn’t come in but went to the pigpens first. Ella had made a pot of coffee.

At the table, Tom and Ella looked in different places and thought their different thoughts. She knew most of the piglets had died. He knew the girls and Billy were in town.

“Did Mr. Dietz come to the house this morning?” Ella asked him after the clock had gone halfway around.

“He did not. Evert did.”

She waited.

“He said they’d had an accident. He said a man had died.”

“Oh my God. Who?”

“I don’t know. I told him I want an autopsy on those pigs.”

“And what was his answer?”

“Nothing. He left without answering.”

Every minute of that week was strange. She felt like she was living someone else’s life. She did not know who at the plant had died—no one in the community knew there had been a death except Tom. She wondered if he’d got it right. She expected every day that there would come a call from Lance; that he would say work, or the accident, had made it impossible for him to meet her. She imagined him apologizing. She imagined telling him that no apology was needed. When she finally got desperate enough to phone the plant and ask for him, the woman who answered said Lance was not there and hung up.

Only then did Ella seriously examine the possibility that Lance did not want to see her again. Maybe he had woken that morning
with a picture of her in his head that was different than before: of an older woman, with her husband and children around her. But she could not imagine him being so unkind as to let silence be the messenger.

Alf Dietz came to their house. Dietz knew that four was Tom’s time for coffee and a scone, and he timed his arrival to coincide with that. The two men faced each other across the Arborite, and Ella served them.

“I was told you lost a man,” said Tom.

“I don’t know how you’d know that, but it’s true.”

“Lance Evert told me,” said Tom, and Ella jumped inside herself to hear the name.

“The man who died was a young mechanic. Not from here—from Crowsnest Pass. Name of Andy Flannery. I told those young pups over and over, never open a pipe unless you know what’s in it. Flannery tried to change a filter by himself on night shift. It was sour and he didn’t know. He was dead a long time before anyone found him. The pipe was open and spewing sour gas—that’s why the siren blew. We’re lucky we didn’t lose half a dozen men.”

Tom smoked and Dietz—who had never smoked in their house—reached for the tobacco tin and rolled himself one. Ella filled her sink and slowly washed the dishes.

“It’s usually Lance Evert who comes down to talk to us,” she said with her face to the window.

Tom said, “I probably scared him. I gave him hell that morning. Did he tell you I want an autopsy on my dead pigs?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” said Dietz. “Evert is no longer in our employ.”

Ella thunked a cup against the wall of the sink.

“That was sudden,” said Tom.

“It was,” said Dietz.

Dietz violently stubbed his cigarette in Tom’s tobacco lid. “What the hell am I doing? Took me twenty years to quit this stuff.”

“Any reason Evert’s gone?” asked Tom.

“Can’t say,” said Dietz. “I don’t think he’s a sour gas man. Not really.”

“What about the autopsy, Alf?”

“It won’t be me who decides. I’ll pass it along.”

“I’ll have one done myself if you guys won’t.”

“Keep your shirt on. For a while anyway.”

“I’ll keep the dead pigs frozen.”

Dietz got to his feet, solemnly thanked Ella for the coffee. Stepped into his boots, as usual untied. When he was gone, Tom said to Ella’s back, “You’ve been at those dishes a long time.”

She could not answer; was blind with tears. She heard him walk to the porch, the deep rip of his coat zipper, the door.

Waddens Lake

BILL
’
S CREW BELIEVED
that he was always touchy after days off. He had given them this impression deliberately, but it was not true. His happiest workdays came after days off, when the maximum span of work lay ahead. He affected owliness to keep them at bay, while he savoured his return.

Henry came in without knocking.

“What?”

“Dion says he’s trying to phone you but your phone’s blocked or something. You’ve left it on call forward. He wants to talk to you.”