He followed all her actions on Facebook. The whole
world knew about her white-water rafting and the cycling, as well as driving
her truck into great hills of snow. She was smiling out at him, holding up a
snow rake that had precipitated a roof avalanche on top of her. Covered in
white and laughing. He could imagine the snow that found its way down behind
her scarf, melting as it touched the heat of her neck. She was pontificating
about frost heaves as if she had never heard of potholes. She hadn’t realised,
until she was where other people were, that this was where she wanted to be,
she told anyone and everyone who bothered to read what she wrote.
Sounds
wonderful, Gretta.
Wish
I could be you, Gretta.
That’s some man you’ve got there,
Girl.
He could see her in the General Store, with its good
old-fashioned charm. She was one of ‘the
communidy’ now. The t softened to
d, letting go of her own tongue to
suck on someone else’s. Boars-head meat beside favourite frozen novelties.
Walking in, being greeted by Barbara behind the counter. How rage boiled up in
him. Lee Saoul playing her guitar over the soft rustle of newspapers as people
turned them over and filled their coffee cups again, called out to her. A pan
in the kitchen being scraped and potatoes mashed while she bought pastrami on
rye, linguica, corned beef hash for her Tom. At least he wasn’t called Bud. Bud
would have killed him entirely. That name opening up to her petal by petal.
Sitting in the front yard on a love seat, a fucking loveseat with his square
jaw and his hair streaked back, a cold beer, full-fitting jeans; blue jays in
the trees.
She posted up pictures of their sugar house. Night
temperatures cold enough to send the sap rushing back down the bole of the
tree, followed by a warm day that drew it right up again. The two of them in
their big, red ass pick-up as they drove out to the sugar bush, striking it
while the sap was running, boring into the trees, the spigot drip, drip into
the pail, bucket, whatever she called it now. All day and night the stove fed
with kindling as they boiled off the water, reducing it all to sweetness.
Bleeding sweetness out of the sugar bush as if she were born to it. Drinking in
all its sickening sap.
Could she not have waited for his sugar time, good old
promises between her lips, instead of packing up and taking the bus to the
airport, fuck-friend waiting for her at the other end with his Shiloh Sharps.
