Who Has Seen the Wind Read online

  He could hear the puppy long after he had gone to bed, its cries borne to him on the rising wind. Then, after his father and mother had left to visit the Abercrombies, and the wind keening along the eavestroughing outside his window had drowned out the dog’s howls, Brian was filled with an ineffable feeling of loss and loneliness. As the wind grew wilder, he became frightened with a rippling fear that ended in sharp tinglings in the backs of his hands, his neck, his feet.

  When he was sure that he could stand it no longer, the memory of the boy on the prairie came to him suddenly. He thought of him with his pale hair and his torn, bleached pants, curled up on the prairie, sleeping alone while the wind rushed over the dark face of the prairie to him, singing through the tall grasses and tossing the fox-tails and black-eyed susans and lupins around him. In that moment he felt a rush of feeling for the boy that he had felt only for his dog before.

  He took two blankets from his bed, sneaked down the two flights of stairs and out of the house. He had difficulty in getting the wide garage doors open, and as he struggled he could hear the dog scratching frantically on the other side. One of the doors came open suddenly, and the puppy was jumping up on him. It had chewed through the twine.

  It took the dog some time to quiet down; for a while it wriggled ecstatically on Brian’s stomach, then curled up in the curve of his elbow. Finally it laid its chin over his shoulder, took one deep breath, nudged Brian’s neck with its cold nose, and went to sleep.

  It was nice, thought Brian, that his parents had gone to the Abercrombies for bridge. The dog’s stomach rumbled twice. Brian put his arms around its neck. He went to sleep too.

  * * *

  Mr. Abercrombie dealt the cards with deft little flicks that sent them round the table to drop in piles as accurate as the man himself. His hands, thought Mrs. O’Connal, were bank manager hands, very square in their palms and finger-tips, the knuckles sharply angled. Their backs were covered with hair like wire, jet against the pale skin; it curled crisply over the edge of his white shirt cuffs. Mrs. O’Connal stirred uncomfortably, very small and very dark, almost lost in her throne chair with its plum-coloured upholstery of Venetian-cut velvet. She hoped that her sons were all right, that if the baby cried, her mother would not be sleeping too soundly to hear him.

  To Mrs. O’Connal’s right, Mrs. Abercrombie was having some difficulty in concealing the irritation she felt at seeing Mr. O’Connal absent-mindedly picking up one by one the cards her husband dealt. Gerald O’Connal’s mind was not on bridge; it was in the office of Dr. Svarich where he had spent part of that afternoon. As he had linked up his sleeves, Peter Svarich, a thin-faced man with an air of discontent, had watched him, one leg over the corner of the table. “Bit of gastritis, I’d say.”

  “Serious?” Mr. O’Connal had asked him.

  “No — not yet. Might bloom into an ulcer. You could try relaxing a bit,” he had gone on in his dry and slightly nasal voice. “Stay away from liquor — pastries — fried stuff — take a quart or two of warm cocoa to the store with you — drink it in the middle of the morning and the afternoon. That’ll put out the fire.” He got up. “Too bad you aren’t a little more like your brother.”

  “Sean!”

  “If you could blow off a little from time to time — relieve the visceral tension. You worry much?”

  “What have I got to worry about? Times are tough, I know, but business is all right. I’ve got a couple of fine boys.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Forty.”

  “Might be change of life,” Svarich had said.

  “Had it twice,” Mr. O’Connal had told him.

  The sound of Abercrombie’s flat voice brought him back to the room. “The trouble with the West,” he was saying, “has been three-fold.” He paused in dealing the cards. “A — too much credit in the beginning — an unhealthy amount of it through the twenties. B — farmers are not a thrifty lot. C — the wealth of the country doesn’t come from sufficiently diversified sources.” The cards took up their snickering again.

  “He is not a practical man,” said Mrs. Abercrombie. “Just look at the condition of that yard. There’s no rhyme or reason to his calls.”

  She’s on poor Hislop again, thought Mrs. O’Connal wearily.

  “He should plan his work and work his plan.”

  “What is required,” said Abercrombie, “is — A — less governmental interference. B — a higher tariff to protect the Canadian business man. C — greater restriction in immigration.”

  “And then there was that C.G.I.T. thing last Sunday,” said Mrs. Abercrombie.

  “Why — I thought it a lovely service,” said Mrs. O’Connal.

  “Did you?” said Mrs. Abercrombie. “Did you? Well — in any event — his — his sermons aren’t as inspiring as they might be. A little more of the Bible — a little less —”

  “R.B. Bennett will blast our way into the European markets for us.”

  “He has to continually look down at his notes.”

  Mrs. Abercrombie was as shapeless as her husband was angular; there was a blown softness about her, in her large arms with their dimpled elbows, in the rounding bosom that gave no hint of plurality, in the plump hands that stabbed out blue-white fire whenever she moved them.

  Mentally Mrs. O’Connal tried to sort out the rings; one had belonged to Mrs. Abercrombie’s mother and had replaced the cheap one that Mr. Abercrombie had given her when he had been simply a bank clerk in a town without running water or electricity. The large solitaire commemorated his getting a bank of his own; he had given his wife the last one when she had presented him with their daughter, Mariel.

  The dealing over, they began to play. Mr. O’Connal’s mind was not on the cards again.

  “You might try golf,” Svarich had said. “Take a couple of nights off from the drug store — won’t hurt you.” He had straightened up and gone to the cupboard in the corner. He took out a jug with brown neck and shoulders. “Drink?”

  “No, thanks,” Brian’s father had said, then watched Dr. Svarich fill a glass for himself. The small consultation room had been suddenly filled with wild and alcoholic pungency. “Just what is it?”

  “The Ben’s Own Tonic. Compounded, I believe, of gopher sweat, skunk civet, the plasma of a pregnant weasel — seasoned in prairie sod, guaranteed to make a Tory scream for Low Tariff, given in payment of an account. I am seriously considering prescribing regular jolts of it for Mrs. Abercrombie.”

  “I’d like to be there when she takes it,” Brian’s father had said. “How do you play golf?”

  Dr. Svarich had stopped pouring another glass of the Ben’s brew. “I don’t know. I play chess.” He had downed the drink. “Golf is Scotch. I’m Ukrainian.”

  “Your play, Gerald.” His wife’s face bore a gently chiding look, Mrs. Abercrombie’s, open impatience.

  It was a large face, its largeness made more noticeable by the smallness of each feature in it. Or on it, thought Maggie O’Connal; it gave one the feeling that it was embossed. Strange that so large a woman was so energetic; she was active in church work, the Red Cross, Daughters of the Empire, the Eastern Star, the library board, the local relief committee for the unfortunates of the dried-out area. Through those committees she picked her way with a deliberateness that brooked no contradiction. By virtue of her rings, the dignity of her husband’s work, a trip they had taken to Europe six years before, and a certain conscienceless insensitivity to what others thought, her social position in the town was unassailable.

  Earlier in the evening, the Abercrombies had taken the O’Connals on their trip. Mrs. O’Connal had been relieved that they had not continued through the Chateaux country, and that Gerald had preserved a discreet though obviously suffering silence. As it always did, Maggie O’Connal’s mind went back to her children at home. She shifted in her chair in an attempt at comfortableness; as she did, she caught a flicker of compassion in her husband’s eye. Like the rest of the pieces, black and Italian,
pierced carving alive with griffins, blown-out cherub faces, lion’s heads, and coats of arms, the chairs they sat in were stiff and uncomfortable evidence of the Abercrombie vandervogel.

  “What we need is an up and coming man in the church,” said Mrs. Abercrombie, “a man who will take time by the fetlock.”

  “Take the Bank of England,” said Mr. Abercrombie.

  “God!” thought O’Connal, “what I’d give for a shot of the Ben’s brew!”

  I hope the children are covered, thought Mrs. O’Connal as she failed to return her husband’s lead.

  * * *

  Jake Harris, the town garbage-, fire-, and police-man, was the possessor of a remarkably ugly face, a series of unpredictable bumps from forehead to Adam’s apple; occasional encounters with the man reminded Dr. Svarich that he was practising in an area where goitre was endemic. Jake’s eyes bore out the doctor’s diagnosis; they bulged.

  He stood in the O’Connal garage with a flashlight turned on Brian and the dog asleep on the floor. He had been summoned from his room on the second floor of the town hall, above the two roan fire- and garbage-wagon horses stabled below. Mrs. O’Connal’s usually contained voice had been frantic.

  “So this is where you got to.”

  Brian concerned himself with getting sleep from his eyes.

  “You’ve give yer maw an’ paw quite a start.”

  “I just thought I’d sleep with my pup,” Brian said. “He’s a fox-terrier.”

  The puppy was awake; he stood for a moment with his feet apart, then went to smell the bottoms of Jake’s pants. He wagged his tail. He liked the bottoms of Jake Harris’ pants.

  “Nice-lookin’ pup.” Jake leaned down. “I fancy the red an’ white, myself.” He straightened up. “Better git in the house an’ let your maw know you’re all right.”

  From the darkness of the front verandah, Brian’s mother came out to meet him; her arms around him were convulsively tight; he wondered how long she had been sitting there alone in the dark, waiting.

  Within the house, his grandmother embraced him, but his father, when he had returned from down town where he had been looking for Brian, was not quite so effusive.

  “Why did you ever do a thing like that? Why did you go out to the garage to sleep? Why did you scare the life out of us!”

  “I wanted to sleep with my pup,” said Brian. “I went out and slept with him.”

  “I don’t suppose it occurred to you that we might worry about you — that we might wonder what had happened to you?”

  “I just wanted to be with my pup, that’s all.”

  His father looked at him seriously. “Look, Spalpeen, I got that puppy against your mother’s wishes. She felt that pups and little boys and grandmothers don’t mix. Now — there’s been nothing but trouble ever since that dog came to the house — if I hear of any more, there isn’t going to be any puppy around the house. Understand?”

  Brian nodded.

  “I’d hate to do it, Brian.”

  Over near the eastern edge of the town, darkness was thinning to the pale violet of dawn, as Brian got into bed. From behind the O’Connal house came the self-assured crow of one of Gaffer Thomas’ roosters. The leaves on the tall poplar that rose outside Brian’s window were perfectly still.

  FIVE

  Mr. Hislop laid the letter down on the desk in his study; he stared for a moment at the worn back of the Harmony of the Gospels, took the pince-nez glasses from their place on his nose, let them drop to hang down his vest front. He looked at the letter half folded on his desk.

  It was a protesting letter. It had been written by the Ladies’ Auxiliary and signed by Mrs. Abercrombie. The candle-light service of the Canadian Girls in Training had not found favour with the Ladies’ Auxiliary. The letter had come as a shock to Hislop, who had assumed that everyone in the congregation had been as pleased as he with the service, with the white middies, blue skirts and blue ties of the C.G.I.T. girls. They had filed down both aisles of the church, each carrying a candle, their young voices lifted in “Follow the Gleam.” To Hislop it had been a moving ceremony; he felt that his sermon had carried a little added fire that day.

  Now, he felt rather sick. He had not thought that any members of his congregation would consider the candle ceremony an indication that Knox Presbyterian church was turning Roman Catholic.

  He might have known, he thought bitterly; the woman’s intolerance was an evil force in the town; he had known it very soon after taking over the church, when he been indiscreet enough to play tennis with Father Cochran, when she had bucked combining services in the summer with the Baptist church. He got up and went to the study window; there he stood looking out to the hedge and the street beyond.

  How could a person be content with the husk, the dry appearances that gave shape to a religion? What was the sense in his standing up there week after week talking to people who followed such a woman, who looked up to her, envied and admired her? He looked back to the letter on the desk. He wondered if he should show it to his wife, then decided immediately not to. It wasn’t just Mrs. Abercrombie; it was the Auxiliary.

  Perhaps he should call a meeting of the elders tonight. He could use the assurance of their confidence in him. There had been none of this in the Peace River country, he thought; and his mind went back to his mission field there, the log cabin with its clearing in the bush, the long rides on horseback to reach four churches on a Sunday. Communities had personalities too, and that one had been rough with the roughness of a harvest hand, but with a naïve and simple friendliness that seemed to go with the newness of the country.

  He’d better phone “Judge” Mortimer and ask him to have a few of the elders come over to the house tonight, then drop over to Digby’s; that would help. He walked over to the wall by the desk and turned the crank on the telephone before he lifted the receiver. As he put the receiver back on the hook, he felt a wave of futility pass over him, a despondency deeper than any he had known in his life; he knew that his faith had been badly shaken, faith in the people he preached to, faith in his work, and faith even in — No, that was still solid; they couldn’t shake that. Just a few weeks ago, there had been a small boy who had renewed it for him.

  He’d go over to Digby.

  * * *

  Brian O’Connal, his puppy in his arms, walked down Sixth Street in the direction of MacTaggart’s corner. It had not been the dog’s fault; the chain his father had got for it should not have been long enough to reach the washing; the clothes-line should have been stronger too. He was remembering the conversation he had overheard between his father and his grandmother after the old woman had found the washing in the dust. “Ye said ye’d send the dog away. If that animal does not go, I will!”

  “All right,” he had heard his father say. “All right.”

  Then, that night, last night, his father had said to him, “Remember what I told you, Spalpeen?”

  “Yes,” Brian had said, “I remember.”

  “There was some trouble this morning.”

  “He just pulled the clothes-line down.”

  “I have to do something about it.”

  “Send him away?”

  “Well — I’ve thought of a pretty good idea.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve had a talk with Forbsie’s father. Hoffmans haven’t a grandmother staying with them, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “A puppy wouldn’t cause such a rumpus in a house where there wasn’t a grandmother, would he?”

  “He wouldn’t stop chewing things just because there wasn’t any grandmother around. What idea?”

  “I thought that if we were to send the puppy away until it wasn’t so much of a pup, it would be a good idea.”

  “For all the time?”

  “No.”

  “Just for a long time,” Brian had said, aware that his eyes were stinging.

  “Not for a long time,” his father assured him, “until he has grown up. Mr. Hoffman says that
they’d be glad to look after him for us. I think that’s pretty fine of the Hoffmans, don’t you?”

  “No,” Brian got out with difficulty, “I don’t.”

  “Well, Spalpeen, there’s nothing else we can do. I can’t think of anything else.”

  “We — couldn’t — send Gramma away till — till — he —”

  His father had reached into his hip pocket and handed him a handkerchief. He had said, “Damn!”

  And after his father had left, Brian had heard him in the bedroom below; he had sounded a lot like his Uncle Sean.

  Forbsie was standing at MacTaggart’s corner; he had evidently been told of the arrangement made for the dog.

  “I’m taking my pup over to stay with you,” Brian told him. “Not very long. It’s not for good.”

  “That’s dandy,” said Forbsie, his fat face shining. “Our pigeons got some eggs now.”

  “He’s only staying till he gets bigger.”

  “The eggs are in a nest, and I’m going to have your pup to play with, and —”

  “You got to feed him at morning and noon and afternoon and at night too. Give him milk.”

  “All right,” said Forbsie. “Can I carry him a ways?”

  “No.”

  Forbsie was silent a moment. “The eggs are sort of warm if you touch them. The mother pigeon sits on them.”

  “Don’t feed him more than what I say. He’ll get fat. His legs will go funny.”

  “All right. There’s going to be baby pigeons come out of those eggs, you know. Could I carry him for a ways now?”

  “He’s kind of heavy.”

  “He doesn’t look heavy. I could carry him all right.”

  “No.”