still at home: volume 2 part 3

work & days: a lifetime journal project

Valleyview-Whitecourt Cut-off 1959 She waits for the bus at the gas station outside of town. It is warm enough inside the cafe to take off her coat. The plate glass window has her sitting in a booth by herself, thrilled in a black sweater, a home-made wool suit, Black Watch plaid, wide plastic belt tight around her waist, bra stuffed with kleenex, hair flopping soft around her big face. Fourteen. There is a suitcase, the family suitcase, bluish-black cardboard rubbed white at the corners. Inside is a fifty-foot crinoline, flesh pink, a blue banlon sweater, a white nylon blouse with short sleeves, and a wide cotton skirt made of curtain fabric, also home-made, white with big green leaves and big blue flowers. A bible. A white purse, I think. Inside it a wallet surely. Her folks have got back into the grain truck and gone home, Judy, Paul, Rudy, more room going than coming because Elfreda has been left behind to wait for the bus. She has been here since it got dark at four. She's had a glass of milk with its queer taste of homogenization, and a cherry sundae. She's glowed at herself in the black glass, she's picked a pimple in the ladies. Her hair is new-washed and she is pretty because she is away from home and going to the hospital, her own world, the city. Drafts under the door, but she is sitting on her feet, boots left dripping under the table. She is describing the people who come through the door in her journal. A high school boy in a curling sweater, big overboots flapping open. He has a coke without looking at her. She would have been glad to smile. The waitress, yellow-haired, not thin, uniform cutting her under the bust, is prowling inside the U of the coffee bar. Truck drivers. She watches what they eat. Bought bread flat and shiney when it's toasted, mashed potatoes reshaped into hard balls with an ice cream scoop. Peaches from tins. Outside, the forest has darkened from the ground up. The blue of snowy twilight vanishes when the yardlight comes on. Lines of snow stream through the yellow brightness between the gas pumps. How does the bus know to stop at service stations? Is there a signal? Twenty dollars and a ticket that cost thirteen. They've brought her to the edge of the farmland. No way back. Stomach burning with love for this moment, which is the future arrived, begun. Two hundred and seventy miles down the snowy road, two hundred miles of bush and oil roads, six hours through the night, and then the beginning of open land again, the city, the plain. She isn't thinking of her family. They are at home now, the little boy is in his cot, Judy in the girls' bed by herself, Paul on the couch in the kitchen. It's she, the mother, who will be following with her intelligent imagination the passing of Elfreda's glorious time. Does she have enough money? She thinks she's grown, I wish she wasn't so glad to go. She never hung back, when she was two she was running ahead, and then ... when she couldn't run at all, and then when we wondered if she'd wear the brace all her life, she didn't mind when she was little, and now, I wonder if they can really do anything for her. They said one more tendon transplant when she stops growing, but her leg is shorter isn't it, they can't change that. Elfreda, in the cafe, knows her right foot is always colder. She sits on it. She has no particular hope. She'd like to be tall and slim. New legs would be part of it. And that miracle happens often enough, she steps from the wooden sidewalk to cross a muddy road in La Glace and strides like an Eaton's catalogue model, a Seventeen girl. It's past eleven, the bus is late, but not very, it cruises in plowing through flurries the headlights seem to create. Blunt heavy bus, glides onto the forecourt like a motorboat with engines cut, silently, the door folding open as it stops. No hurry! says the proprietor, the driver. Without snow boots, very light in his visored cap and short jacket. He steps into the cafe for the freight and the lading bills. Ticket to Edmonton? I'll take that, and the black suitcase is stowed into the underbelly. She has crossed the forecourt with him and climbs the steps alone. The bus is full, no, a double seat near the back on the right. She comes carefully down the aisle, looks intently at everyone she passes, so intently that they look back, except for those who are sleeping. She sits on her feet again, hides her purse down by her boots, covers her knees with her coat, and turns on the overhead light, which shines on her place in the row like the spotlight on her adventure. Across the aisle a town girl, leg crossed at the knee and one shoe fallen to the floor, high-heeled, red, is reading True Story, page bent back and held with one hand, clear nail polish and lots of cuticle remover, like town women reading in Dr. McCrum's office. Like the principal's wife. Her overhead light shines on her chignon, her breasts poke stiffly under her sweater, she is beautiful. But she rolls her magazine and puts it into her purse, reaches up her arm to turn off her light, wraps her coat backward around her shoulders, and turns her face to the window. The driver crosses the top of the aisle, files papers on a clip attached to the sun visor, climbs onto his seat, winds the lever that shuts the door. Air brakes hiss. The black room leaves the service station's white forecourt and joins the black road. Now Elfreda's light is the only one. She has described the woman in her journal and has nothing more to say, but holds the book in her lap and smiles at her reflection smiling over the tops of scrubby trees. The steady big motor, the straight road. There are no cars. When another Northern Transport bus passes it dips its lights. The bus driver sits awake, a pilot in his uniform holding the bus on course, his hand on the gear stick lit by his dials. In the luggage rack suitcases - in Seventeen they say bags - rattle lightly. Her own black suitcase is somewhere under the lady's seat. She is wide awake when they arrive in Whitecourt, on the other side of the bush. Another white forecourt, this one in the town. We'll be here twenty minutes, stretch your legs if you like, the bus driver says loudly, no concessions to the sleepers. Elfreda leaves her coat to keep her place, follows the passengers who have arrived into the waiting room. The surprizingness of these places, their two drunk friends, their young Indian, fat-faced, elbows on his knees, watchful, sitting on his suitcase. There's a heavy woman greeted by a farmer in a furlined parka, there are two Indian girls asleep next to each other on the chrome and plastic bench. The bus driver is unloading cardboard boxes. Elfreda sits at a table where she can watch to make sure he doesn't unload her suitcase by accident. She has a pineapple sundae and a toasted cheese sandwich. The waitress is slow with the toasted cheese, she has to wrap it in a paper napkin and put it in her purse. When she gets back into the bus she sees her coat in her spot under the light. She gathers it up gratefully, it and her notebook, and takes off her boots, sits on her feet. She sees a passenger coming toward her, looking left and right for a seat. He doesn't meet her eye until he is level with her, and then passes. She feels him hesitate behind her, he turns, leans over her to stow his canvas bag. She sees his shirt stretch up above his belt buckle, and then he drops into the seat next to her. She has gathered in her knees to make room. He's wearing his windbreaker open, his suede shoes are wet, he's brought in the smell of cold nylon. She wants not to be awkward, also she is shy in her excitement. He wraps his arms across his chest, slouches back and stretches his legs forward under the seat in front of him. The bus throws itself onto the street that leads out of town. She wants to ask him if the light bothers him. She doesn't dare, and anyway the point of it is gone because she is no longer alone to smile at herself through the window. She turns it off. Does he look sideways as she reaches up? Do men know the difference when you have kleenex in your bra? Being alone with him takes her breath. She sits very still. He reaches forward to take off his wet shoes. He's a man, he's out of high school. She approves the way his hair grows down his neck, he needs a haircut. He shaves, he smells of cigarettes. When he leans back again, he props his knees against the seat in front of him, which gives a little. A woman peers around. Sorry, he says, reaches for the cigarette package in his pocket, shakes out a cigarette, lights it. Elfreda is staring from the corner of her eye. He sits holding it on his knee, smokes it, making a red arc from mouth to knee. She is cramped, unfolds and without realizing sits as he does, propping her knees against the seat in front of her. He finishes his cigarette, grinds it out against the package, shakes the package again and -- holds it out to her. No, thank you, she says. He takes the cigarette himself, lights it, holds it on his knee and doesn't smoke it. She's glad of its light, watches it streaming through the darkness outside, the spot of fire cutting through telephone poles, mowing them down. Up front the driver in his green light of the dials rides oblivious of the passengers, the bus body his dark comet's tail. The woman across the row is the only visible person, and she is asleep, her face dropping down into her fur coat, her shoes alone on the floor, one standing up, shivering, tottering. Her smooth fine toes glimmer in nylon under its hem. He is looking at them too. The two of them are blazing alone, they are awake, she is back in the delight before the stop, and he is part of it. She is making up a Seventeen story about him, she is thinking of what she will write about him. He puts his head back and closes his eyes. She leans hers back as well but her eyes are open. If he sleeps she can look at him. He puts his feet down onto the foot rest and crosses his hands over his fly. There are a few settlements, a few road signs, now. Green Court. Sangudo. He slumps down, his head sinks. Very gradually, it sinks as far as her shoulder. He is maybe asleep. She closes her eyes, something blooms up in her stomach like smoke. She feels his shoulder rising and falling against hers. Very carefully, she's smiling, she eases the side of her face against his hair. Gradually her body lets go the clamps in her arms, her back. She's breathing his breaths with him, she's smelling his hair. She doesn't sleep. Her being is focussed on the surfaces that touch him, withdraws from the rest of her body, which rests in darkness. And so she cannot turn her head to look out the window when before dawn they reach the first traffic light, red, the first street lights shining on sidewalks. She has to look across the aisle through the far window to see the ranch houses, the crescent streets of the outskirts. At the next light he opens his eyes, she can see his lashes move but not his eyes. He straightens; so does she. They glance at each other and smile. Both look away. They arrive at the bus depot. The bus swings sharply under an arch, into its kennel, into its stall. The woman's feet feel for their shoes. He's on his feet, stretching for his bag. She's squirming into her boots, into her coat. The bus driver is at the door handing people out. They wait until the front of the bus is clear. He follows her down the aisle. She jumps past the bus driver's hand and joins the group of people waiting for their luggage at the bus flank. She smiles, he smiles, he swings his bag, and he leaves. The town woman is kissing a man in a suit. She carries her suitcase across the waiting room, big as a community hall, with lockers like grey refrigerators ranged down the walls, to the cafe, where she buys the Christmas issue of Seventeen and sits down at the counter. She orders a fried egg sandwich and - after a hesitation - a cup of coffee. Moves to a booth and opens her journal.