Wild Rose Read Free Page B

puzzling over her husband’s absence. Two nights now, and soon three days.
    She knew before she knew; maybe she had always known it, the sudden weight of her knowing buckling her knees, so that she slumped against the door frame, clinging to it so as not to fall, terror at what would become of her and her child seizing her before a single clear image of perils ahead emerged. She made her way, staggering, to the wooden table in front of the stove where her babe played with his porridge and sang to himself, fell into the first chair, the one in which Pierre always sat. A roaring was in her ears; her breath came quickly: Pierre wasn’t coming back. Pierre had left them.
    The room’s shadows had taken on a strange, bruise-like colour. She held the tabletop with both hands as if the cabin were a ship at sea tilting to the left and to the right; bile rose into her throat and she swallowed, forcing herself to breathe evenly through her nose until her stomach quieted and the room stopped its crazed pitching. Charles was carefully putting a fingertip into his porridge, lifting a tiny dollop, then placing it on the table top, pausing to consider it, then reaching for another and placing it beside the first. She watched the care with which he did this, even in her fear and shock marvelling at the precision a three-year-old could muster.
    Tears sprang into her eyes. She wept copiously for less than a minute before fear returned, lifting her to her feet so abruptly she knocked over the chair and Charles looked up and would have wept had she not leaned over him quickly, kissing his dark hair, briefly caressing his face.
    Back to the door, opening it again, this time with hands that shook. He hated the hard labour of plowing virgin soil from sunrise to sundown; it troubled him deeply to see what the sun and constant wind were doing to his handsome face, how his hands were thickened and scarred. Voyez! he had shouted at her, lifting them to her face. She had gazed silently at her own, pleading, “It is honest labour. Soon we will have a crop.” He had turned away, pushed open the door and gone out onto the prairie. She should have known then that they would be leaving their homestead, for town, she supposed, where there were people, real houses, a community, where he would find some sort of work to do. Or perhaps he’d been planning to return to Québec. But if so, wouldn’t he have taken them? How could he make such a decision and never once ask her? When they had vowed to be one, to think as one, to work together as one? Was he not the only possible man for her life?
    Wherever he had gone, it was not back to Québec where he would be shamed and worse if she and Charles weren’t with him. Where then? North to the Métis communities near Prince Albert? Farther West to the French villages near Fort Edmonton? No, that would only be more of the same. More likely he had gone south to cross the border into the United States. The border had barely been established there, there were no guards nearby; crossing it would be easy. Or – he could have had trouble getting his broken part fixed. Maybe he had to go on to Swift Current or even to Garden City where – but no. Even if he had gone on, he would have been back by now. He would have sent a messenger. Wouldn’t he have?
    Wait! Why did he take the wagon and team if he knew he was leaving forever? Why didn’t he just saddle the horse he loved so much and gallop away across the prairie as he had done more than once before? But she had been washing clothes the day he left and had noticed nothing missing from his meagre wardrobe. He hadn’t loaded the wagon with any of his belongings, so why did he not take Tonerre?
    Charles had grown tired of his porridge game, climbed down from the table and was once again pursuing an ant. She said aloud, “Pierre has left with a woman.” Charles looked up from where he squatted in his pursuit and asked, “Maman?”
    “He has taken a woman with