Summer 2000

I was late that morning.  It had been minus forty-five overnight and the truck didn't start, and there was more mail than usual to sort when I got into town.  Flyers always go out on Mondays.  So it was already after eight before I got to George Miller's.  Ellen was walking up the driveway with a letter for her daughter Susan, and fifty cents for the stamp.  I keep trying to remember something out of the ordinary, something I missed.  But she seemed fine. 

I stopped running when I saw Ed.  He was just standing there, shielding his face from the heat with his hand. The barn must have gone up fast, the hayloft was full of old square bales.  Bryan's horse was pressed up against the windbreak at the far corner of its small pasture.  I could hear the horse's screams over the fire's cracking. 

I looked around.  "Where's George and Ellen?"

"I saw them go by this morning with a load of cattle." 

"Any cows inside?"

"Not sure.  Got here too late to do anything, but I don't think so."

The timber groaned and the roof collapsed with a crash, throwing sparks into the air that hissed as they hit the snow.  The horse tried to jump the fence but got tangled up in the barbed-wire.  Later when I went to get my rifle, the door of the pick-up was still open and cinders had burnt holes in the seats.

I remember thinking  that George and Ellen had enough problems right now, and that it was a shame about the barn.  Not too many like it around anymore, and still in such good shape.

I guess this is how Ellen felt when Bryan died.  Only seven years old, but God knows the doctors did everything, chemotherapy, bone marrow transplant, months in and out of hospitals, specialists, blood tests, x-rays, MRIs, and what-not.  It all just wore Ellen out.  And now that Susan's gone to university I guess Ellen-- I don't know what Ellen felt.  I thought she was doing all right.  George was talking about a vacation.  Hawaii, with Susan at Christmas.  Get out of the snow, he said.

I didn't worry when she didn't phone that morning.  She said she might go to Clyde with George.

I was forty-two when I had Ellen, and sick for so long after.  I thought I would never live to raise her. 

I could see the smoke for miles.  I didn't know what was burning until I got past Ferdell's bush, and thought it might even be our house.  I couldn't remember if I unplugged the iron or not.  Gus was walking back toward his truck.  Ed was standing at the far end of the little pasture George had fenced off for Bryan's horse.  

Ed looked up as I approached.  "I don't know what I was thinking.  All I would have had to do was open the gate."

The horse was still alive, struggling to get free but bleeding from cuts in its neck, the snow turning red.  Going back to the car, I passed Gus.  Driving down the driveway, I turned on the radio so I wouldn't hear the shot.  Irene told me later that Gus hated to do it, having raised and broken the colt himself.  George bought the horse from them for Bryan's birthday last year. I didn't find out until Ed came home later that night.

The day after the fire, Marg and I took over a couple of casseroles for George.  Susan wasn't home yet, and George was out feeding cows.  Marg left hers in the fridge for George and I went downstairs to put mine in the freezer so Susan could just take it out and heat it up later.

I couldn't believe my eyes, there was already a half dozen casseroles: tuna, lasagna, rice, scalloped potatoes, all in Ellen's pans.  Four pies, a chocolate cake, a tin of George's favorite cookies.  A pan of Ellen's famous rhubarb cobbler.  And Bryan's funeral was just a few weeks ago.  I didn't say anything to anybody, not even Marg.  Especially not Marg, she said Ed felt terrible, he thinks he might have been able to... When I told Gus later, after the kids were in bed, he said I was imagining things. 

Susan came home, and the sound of Mozart echoed through empty rooms.  Something to fill the space, anything.  Mozart and rhubarb cobbler.  The emptiness just got bigger.  Susan and I didn't talk about it.  What was there to say?

The silence is deafening.  The black hole in the snow where the barn used to be haunts my dreams.  Charred timbers reach skywards, feeble, like in old war photographs.  I want to ask, but Dad's eyes tell me he doesn't know.  I play Mozart, the same sonata, over and over again, the only one I know.  She always liked Mozart.

George had taken a load of cattle over to Clyde that morning, the old Ford two-ton drove by as I headed back to the house for breakfast.  Coldest stretch that winter, water-bowls frozen again.  Marg said at breakfast we should have them over for supper soon, but she didn't phone Ellen right away.  I don't remember why.  Marg drove into town that morning to take her mother shopping, and I went out to the shed to work on the tractor.  I was out there most of the morning, didn't see the smoke until I was heading back to the house for lunch.  By the time I got there, there was nothing to save.  I just stood there and watched, to make sure the fire didn't spread to other buildings.  I should have done something about the horse.  I don't know what I was thinking. 

I had no idea Ellen was in the barn.  Never even thought of it.  Just assumed she had gone with George.

I never meant for things to be this way.  I always thought my life would be something more, something better, something different.  I didn't want things to turn out like this.