MICHAEL AND THE WIDOW LADY

MICHAEL AND THE WIDOW LADY.

ELK RIVER, CANADA, 1923

Michael Lynch returned from the Great War with sunken cheeks and a face as white as birch bark. He was still pale and scrawny five years later as he sat on the widow’s porch thinking about his dead buddy. He often thought about Jimmy though he never talked about him, and while time had faded many of Michael’s memories, his memories of Jimmy had grown stronger.

What Michael remembered best were the nights they spent on look-out duty, thirty yards from the enemy’s front line trench. Look-out duty in the forward dug-out meant staring into No-Man’s-Land until your eyes dripped. It meant watching swirling shapes grow and shrink until they dropped onto your head like a hangman’s hood. It meant listening for the squish of mud or the click of a rifle which warned that the enemy was on a raiding party in No-Mans’s Land and they must send up a Verry light to warn their own line. Being on look-out was feeling so alone you were afraid to breathe; it also meant feeling so close to your buddy that you breathed as one.

Michael remembered the promises he and Jimmy whispered to each other on their last watch. They agreed that after the war they’d go to Jimmy’s sister in Saskatchewan where they’d finalize plans to start up their own sheep ranch. Michael remembered the scratch of Jimmy’s whiskers on his face and the taste of ashes in his mouth. At first light, after repositioning the sandbags, they hugged each other for a long while then crouched low to make their way to the sentry post. But just then - for whatever reason - Jimmy stood up on a fire step and sang out the word, “Saskatchewan!”

“Get down,” Michael hissed, but it was too late. A Hun sniper spotted him and the bullet tore off the back of his head.

A chopping sound turned Michael’s thoughts to the woman in the kitchen. Patricia Willard was a tall woman from the west of Ireland who’d arrived in Elk River as Patricia Rooney. She’d come to care for Estelle Willard, the banker’s wife, who suffered a stroke while pinning draperies in her dining room. Three years later when Estelle died after what the doctor called the best nursing care he’d ever seen, no one was surprised to learn that seventy-five year-old Willard wanted to keep the hard-working woman in his house. What surprised them was that Patricia agreed to marry the old man even though Willard’s grand-nephew was set to inherit his every penny. People were even more surprised when Willard dropped dead in the bank and there was no mention at all of a grand-nephew.

Michael had no idea what Patricia wanted to talk to him about, but he knew that was the reason she’d asked him to come. Last week he was sifting through a box of nails in the hardware store when she stepped up next to him and asked if she might have a word. She nodded to an alcove, and when he followed her there she spoke in a voice so low he wondered if he was really heard her ask if he’d pay her a visit. “I want to discuss some important matters with you,” she said a little louder - as if that was an ordinary statement to make to someone you barely knew.

Still, when he arrived at the Willlard house with its stone base bottom and brown clapboard top decked out with strange turrets and steeples, no mention was made of important matters. Instead, Patricia suggested they walk to the gardens and check on a patch of land where she’d planted several varieties of corn. After that, they walked out the White Deer Road and through MacGregor’s fields. They returned to the house by way of a logging trail before Patricia went to prepare what she called “a cold supper,” and Michael checked the barn loft for rotting wood and fixed a squeaky hinge on the screen door.

There were plenty of reasons to feel awkward about stretching his legs on the widow’s porch, but he didn’t feel the least bit awkward. In fact, the nervous hum that often ran through his torso was quiet. He tilted his head back to the porch ceiling which looked as if it had been polished with beeswax, and when drowsiness overcame him he stood up and slapped his cheeks.

He crept through the house touching his fingertips to a mahogany table and a fringed wall-hanging of a peacock. At the kitchen door he watched Patricia slicing tomatoes onto a blue plate. When he returned to the porch as a lone tree frog began croaking.

Michael stood when Patricia came to the porch carrying a wooden tray. He pulled a small table toward her and sat behind his own small table while she sat on the wicker sofa. Michael finished his second helping and swallowed the last of his lemonade. He hadn’t settled on anything to say but he was beginning to think one of them should say something. The hum in his chest was back urging him to get up and sit beside her but before he could move Patricia stood and put their plates onto the tray. After she returned to her seat she looked at Michael for a long while before folding her hands in her lap. “You don’t talk much,” she said.

“Nor you.” He was glad she’d spoken but he still couldn’t think what he could say.

Patricia let out a breath. “I have something to discuss. She unfolded her hands and sat even straighter. “I need someone to help me - someone who doesn’t mind hard work.”

“I thought you had help.” He didn’t know why he spoke. He didn’t know anything about Patricia or how she kept the Willard house and grounds in such good condition. “I thought you had a boy come down from the Indian camp to trim the trees in the orchard.”

“I don’t mean that sort of day help.”

“I misunderstood.”

“I’m fixing to buy the MacGregor place – all one hundred and fifty acres.”

“What?”

“Thomas MacGregor had an arrangement with Mr. Willard that said if MacGregor decided to sell, he’d come here first. ‘First refusal’ they call it.”

“MacGregor is selling?” Michael had overheard his brothers speculating about MacGregor’s land, but he hadn’t picked up a hint that the land was coming up for sale.

“I’m buying.”

“What will you do with it?”

“You probably know there’s been a move away from wheat. Corn is what I’ll plant. I’m thinking about milk cows too. You’ve had experience with cows.”

Michael didn’t know if the widow had heard that his father had disinherited him, or that he was sleeping in the barn while his brothers and their families were ensconced in the house. Michael’s father had been a die-hard Fenian who couldn’t abide the fact that Michael had joined the Canadian Expeditionary Forces and had to swear an oath of true allegiance to King George the Fifth, and to his heirs and successors. In other words, to become a soldier in the Canadian army, Michael had to swear to what every Fenian Irishman – no matter where he lived - had to swear against -- which was to destroy the king and every Englishman for as long as Britian ruled over Ireland.

“I don’t have any money to put into an operation,” Michael said, using the same word Jimmy had used when they talked about the sheep ranch. “I mean, I can’t invest in what you’re doing.”

“I’m not after investing. I need a man who can work as hard as I can.”

“What?”

“I’d give you half of it – half of all that was left me.”

“I don’t understand.” Michael felt as he did in the hardware store. Her words had to circle inside his head before he could get their meaning.

“I need someone to help me do what I’m aiming to do,” the widow said.

“You want me to work for you, is that it?”

“A partner, but you wouldn’t have to put in any money.”

Michael took a breath and looked at a spot on the screen behind Patricia’s head. “I’m not interested in marrying if that’s what you mean.”

Patricia nodded. “I don’t want a man. I have no need for that.”

Michael dropped his eyes. The muscles in his upper arms felt as if they’dturned to mush. “I’m not interested in any of that,” he whispered.

“There’d have to be a wedding.”

“I’d live here, is that what you’re saying?” In the barn where he slept there was a wood stove, a cot and a table with its legs cut off.

“That’s it exactly.”

“And have half your property?”

“Aye. I have no need of so much.”

Michael nodded. All he needed was his meals and a place to sleep.

He looked into Patricia’s eyes before standing and pulling his chair directly across from her. “You want to marry and share your property with me?”

“I can’t do it by myself, and I’m not after wanting the land to go to others. I’m not afraid of hard work and you’re not either.”

“I’m not afraid of work.”

“I have kin. My brother’s young ones need me to look out for them.”

“You have a brother? Here?”

“In Ireland…killed in the war. He left a wife and three little ones.”

“Oh. And you?”

“There’s a woman, the sister of my friend, in Saskatchewan. I’d send her something on a regular basis.”

Patricia nodded. “We haven’t much time if we are to go ahead.”

“Time?”

“MacGregor wants to leave Elk River as soon as possible. There are others he’ll turn to if we don’t move fast.”

Michael leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. He felt the air move in and out of his lungs. “People always said that because of the turrets and steeples the Willard house looked like a church.”

His throat began to throb and he wasn’t sure he could trust his voice. “They said the land around it was blessed.”

He remembered how he’d been as a boy. Back then, he was fearless and never hesitated to take on any challenge. Back then he never doubted he could do the brave thing.

He took in a breath and felt how the air fluttered in his chest before he breathed again. “Yes,” he said, looking at Patricia. “Yes,” he said even louder. “Let’s move ahead.”