Who by Fire (7 page)

As if poor Billy wasn’t feeling bad enough, she had to wake him to say goodbye. The hired man had always been like a big brother. Billy cried, and Kees stood beside the bed strangling his cap in his big hands. He had no idea how to console Billy, so, instead, he started bawling too.

Tom had been out in the truck, waiting. When he stormed in to tell Kees to hurry up, that’s what he saw: Billy, Kees, and Ella, all with wet faces. Tom was impatient with Kees, saying the trip to the Greyhound bus in town was lost time he could not afford. It was Tom’s way when hurt to become angry. As far as Ella was concerned, Kees was the only one of them not tied to the farm. Leaving was the smart thing to do.

After Tom and Kees had been gone an hour, Billy was still in bed—or was back in bed, having tried once to get up. Ella was brimming with anger when she finally went to the phone. To the woman who answered, she said, “I want Mr. Dietz to come to our house right away. It’s Mrs. Ryder. He knows where we live and so should you. We’re your closest neighbours.”

A half-hour later, it was not Dietz’s half-ton that came into the yard but a little car with rusted fenders. Lance Evert climbed out.

“I was expecting Mr. Dietz,” Ella said when she pulled back the door.

He was so cast down she almost laughed. But she would not let him off.

“Come in, but I’m telling you, Lance, if Mr. Dietz has the idea he can send you instead of coming himself and that will calm me down, he doesn’t know me. I’m very angry with him, with you, and with your plant. You’re going to hear about it.”

Like a struck puppy he entered, shed his boots in the porch, hung his coat on a hook, shuffled forward into the kitchen in his socks. She pointed at the children’s side of the table, and he sat there. He had yet to say a word. The coffee was low in the perk, but she poured it anyway. Let him get some lukewarm grit in his pretty teeth.

“The crew foreman told me it was a bad night. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t bother being sorry. I’m not interested in sorry. It was a
very
bad night. Our hired man has quit. But the worst thing is that Billy’s been sick all night again. He’s had to go back to bed. It is not fair, you know, that a small child should suffer so you people can make gas and sulphur. If you had any decency, you’d understand that letting your plant go on pumping out its sickening stuff is no better than if you came down here and beat that boy with a stick.”

Lance lost the last of his colour. It seemed fair that she had made him look sick, the way Billy always looked. He had the sense to say nothing, could probably tell from her tone that she would leap all over any excuse he made. Head down, he waited for more.

“You’re letting your coffee get cold.” Which was a laugh since it hadn’t been warm to begin with. She would have liked him less if he had taken a drink in response. He did not move at all.

“I suppose if you could do anything with your plant to make it stop stinking, you would.”

He nodded.

An odd idea came over her: that she had power over this boy. She was remembering how he had gawked at her in the community hall, seeming helpless not to. And the way he looked now, punished
and sad. She wondered for a second if she’d ever had as much effect on Tom and supposed that the real answer was that she hadn’t wanted or needed it.

She wondered what might happen if she asked, “What would you do to make me happy right now?” She was almost certain his answer would be: “Anything.”

These thoughts calmed her. Having wanted to chew his ears off, she now felt something like gratitude.

“Did you eat anything this morning?”

“I had breakfast at the motel.”

“Then I know where you live, since there’s only one motel in Haultain that has a restaurant. I’ve heard the food there is terrible.”

“Bacon and eggs. Most places get that right.”

Now he was smiling, which made her focus on his mouth. His lips were so youthful, as if they had never cracked in the weather. But he had grown up in this climate, according to what Comstock said.

“Mr. Comstock said you’re from Saskatchewan.”

“Saskatoon. I started university there but thought the University of Alberta would have more about oil and gas in its engineering program.”

“And did it?”

“No. But it’s a good university. I had good professors.”

“And you did well, I understand.”

He had been looking at her. At her mention of his doing well at university, his eyes shot down.

“It’s not a crime to do well. I did.”

“You went to university?”

“To normal school. I was hoping to become a teacher but my father got ill. This is their house, Mom and Dad’s. I’m their only child. Dad became asthmatic in middle age and certain kinds of farm chores
were impossible for him. Chopping grain, shovelling chop. So I came home.”

She watched the play of emotions on his face, his trying to decide on a best response. How odd to be around someone constantly wanting to say what you wanted to hear. It made her wonder what she looked like to him. Her hair was still black. She knew she was pretty, black eyes and a curve in her smile that people had always commented on. Her facial lines hadn’t deepened enough to take that away.

Normally, she followed up the story of her interrupted education with the fact that Tom had come home from the coal mines about the same time. His own father’s health had gone bad, a thing in common between them when they met at dances. When it was a romance, Tom had helped Ella and her father with the fieldwork. But she did not say any of that to Lance Evert.

“What’s going on at the plant, Lance? Is it supposed to be like this?”

“It sure isn’t. The mixture of hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide, at this pressure, is new to even Mr. Dietz. I wasn’t taught anything about it at university.”

“So you’re unprepared for the problems, is what you’re saying.”

“I guess so. They built the plant out of expensive high-grade steel and that was supposed to take care of unknowns. But this gas gets right inside the steel and cracks it. Dietz has seen it before and says it’s the hydrogen does that. But it’s happening way faster in this plant for some reason he doesn’t know.”

“If it cracks steel, gas must get out.”

“That’s right. What Dietz has our men doing is puncturing the blisters on the vessels, flattening them with hammers, and covering them with gunnite.”

“What’s that?”

“Thick grey goo that dries hard.”

She put scones on the table, and he automatically took one and bit into it. She had given him butter and a knife but he didn’t use them.

“I phoned my professor in Edmonton. He says it’s called hydrogen embrittlement. The hydrogen ion gets loose and invades the steel. When I told him about the good steel they used to build the plant, he said it’s probably too good, that the molecules are too lined up. Dietz was interested in that, and we’ve started substituting old bolts for the fancy ones that fail.”

Ella was concentrating hard. She would have made notes but had a feeling that Lance would wake up if she did, would realize he was spilling the beans. She would put what she could remember in the binder later. But then she decided to push him a little more. She mustn’t be too polite.

“Is that the worst of it, then? The hydrogen business?”

He said there was something else, but then he was talking a language that made no sense to her. Foaming amine tower. Catalyst smothered in hydrocarbon overflow. She didn’t bother trying to commit this to memory, as it wouldn’t mean anything to Tom either. She drew Lance back out of his trance.

“Are there many in your family?”

“Only child.”

At once, Ella imagined an easy life, which was probably unfair. Farmers too often thought of city people as well off.

“Why did Mr. Dietz send you down here, Lance?”

This question caused his face to lose its handsomeness. It was more the boy he had recently been that came visible.

“He didn’t say why, but he’s been sending me on all the complaint calls.”

This was so easy to understand it was hard to believe Lance
didn’t know. Dietz was gruff and stone faced. Lance was young and nice looking; much harder to be mad at.

“I wish he wouldn’t.” Lance blushed. “I don’t mean I don’t want to be here. It’s nice here.”

“What do you mean?”

He huffed out a breath, a burden. “I’ve been to the Gerstens’ a few times. I’m not used to places like that.”

Ella tried not to smile at this but did. A city boy with no siblings going into Paul and Gertie’s explained itself. Sometimes, when Ella had been to visit, the smell in that house would have offended a dog. Poor Gertie had three children in diapers, and between feeding all those babies and the rest of it, she never caught up with her laundry. Paul had bought a wringer-washer second-hand but of course it was on sale for a reason. Last time Ella visited, it was standing lopsided outside the door. It could not be fun for a young engineer to go house to house listening to complaints, getting blamed.

“I guess it’s time we both went back to work,” she said.

He got up reluctantly. She could barely remember if she’d scolded him or not.

When he had his coat on, he said, “I hope Billy’s better soon.”

“I’m letting him sleep.”

“That’s good.”

“You can come again,” she told him, watching his mouth. “You don’t have to wait for me to be mad.”

The lips smiled. “We’ll keep trying to fix things. I’ll let you know how it’s going.”

When he was gone and she returned to the kitchen, Billy was there in his flannel pyjamas. The bottoms were twisted at the waist. She slid her fingers in and straightened them. He was pale but he wasn’t green. “Who was that?” he asked.

“Mr. Evert. The man you met at the meeting.”

Suddenly the boy had energy. He pulled a chair to the window and climbed on, caught the last of Lance’s little car circling the yard and entering the driveway. “I remember,” he said. “I like him.”

“I like him too,” said Ella. “Do you feel like eating?”

He was still watching out the window. He shook his head.

“You have to eat, you know.”

“But not now.”

When Tom got back home, Ella had a cold lunch waiting for him. Billy was asleep on the couch.

“He’s always pale,” Ella said. “I’m going to take him to the doctor.”

Tom had an urge to argue and did not know why.

“I’ll wait a week, then,” she said, as if he had spoken against her.

He quickly finished the sandwich and drank off the last of the tea. When he took his dishes to the sink, he saw cups and bread plates already there.

“You had company.”

“Lance Evert from the plant. I phoned and asked for Alf Dietz but he sent Lance.”

“Did he have anything to say?”

“Not really. Just that they were trying this and that.”

“That’s helpful.”

“You can phone them yourself. Be as forceful as you please.”

Tom put on his coveralls, parka, moccasins, and overalls. When the stinging air hit him, he was glad, even though it tasted of the burning pit. Lately every conversation with Ella went like that: shooting off into sourness over nothing. He could say it was not her fault, when she’d been up half the night with a sick boy, but why was it never anyone else’s head she bit off? She had patience with the kids but none for him.

He started across to the one-ton, and King, the black Lab, came
trotting from his doghouse. Together they would go to the bale pile. King would dive under every bale Tom lifted, hoping for a mouse. When the load was on, they would head for the sweeter air of the Lower Place, where the cows would be crowded in the nearest corner bawling for relief.

Weeks later, Tom and Ella were outside doing chores in the morning dark. There had been stink again, and Billy woke up twice during the night. Tom’s usual chores were to water and feed the pigs, but today he grabbed a bucket and followed Ella to the barn. They sat on their three-legged stools, heads in the flanks of the cows, and roared milk against the metal until both buckets had a halo of froth. The cow-smelling warmth was comfort, and, though they did not speak—or because they did not—there was a feeling of well-being between them. This was what it had been like, Tom remembered, before the plant came. They had been living with the plant for so short a time but it had changed everything.

The light before dawn came while they were in the barn. Ella said there was something funny about the hired man’s shack, something about the walls, but he could not see it and thought she must be wrong. Later, when she was making pancakes, Tom scratched ice off the window so he could look at the shack again. Just then, the first ray of sunlight shot across the yard, and he saw it clearly. The walls, which Kees had painted white last summer, were streaked yellow and green. With the leftover paint, Kees had done the trim on the chophouse, and every length of trim was the same mess. As Ella came toward Tom, drying her hands on the tea towel, he said, “Look at this, for Jesus sake.”

“Tom, I’ve asked you to stop that.”

“Well look for yourself.”

Ella stared for a while, then said, “I’ll phone later.”

“Eat your breakfast first.”

“I said later, didn’t I?”

Then Jeannie and Billy were in the room, and went to look out where Tom had scratched off the frost. Jeannie started to cry, which she almost never did, and that touched off Billy, who didn’t even know what he was looking at. Tom shouted, “Stop crying! Both of you!” and the way they looked at him, and Ella looked at him, filled him with such shame he left the house. He went to his shop and sat in the banded light from the cracked windows, smoking away the hunger that gnawed in his stomach.

For Ella the week was a nightmare from which she could not wake. Billy simply would not get well. For two nights after the night the paint had discoloured, he slept through but was so tired in the morning she had to pick him up and carry him to breakfast. Then he fell back asleep over his cereal, the spoon falling out of his limp hand to the linoleum.

Ella did not phone about the paint for several days. She wanted Lance Evert in her kitchen again, but was afraid that, if he came, she would break into sobs before him. Finally she admitted to Tom that she hadn’t made the call, and he surprised her by going straight to the wall and making it himself. He seemed to be talking to Dietz and said something about replacement paint. The idea that it would probably be Lance who brought the paint lifted her up higher than she’d been in days.