Human Frailties

Another short story, this one about how disasters are rarely a result of what they seem to be.

by Christina Carson

Her hand reached through the blackness of the bedroom, hit the buzzer button after just one buzz and wearily slid back off the clock to hang limply over the edge of the bed. Lucy forced her eyes open to see the only thing visible in the room, the clock face indicating 3:00 AM. She dragged her weary body out from under the covers and was reminded of the temperature they suffered every winter in this wreck of an old house as she pulled the jeans on she’d left lying on the floor when she went to bed only hours earlier. They dragged the cold up her legs and over her butt as she gritted her teeth and shivered. She stuffed her long underwear shirt down in them to get something warm against her stomach again. Her wool socks were already on her feet which was a blessing, and she loaded a cotton turtleneck and then heavy wool sweater on top of it all. Her mate slept through her dressing, since his shifts were midnight and 6:00 AM. She always did the 3:00 AM shift, just that one, but the one the ewes were most fond of employing when it came time to birth their lambs.

The kitchen was a smidgen lighter, as the yard light entered the uncurtained windows but was checked by the coating of ice that encased them from the outside. Lucy next pulled on her quilted coveralls, laced up her snow boots, put a wool toque on her head and finally pulled on her parka. Her last act of dressing was sliding her hands into two sets of mittens – wool inners, leather outers. She took a breath, opened the porch door, and stepped into the porch the way astronauts step into their airlocks, only air was not her problem, cold was.

Sometimes at that hour of the morning she would be treated to the aurora, a waving curtain of brilliant colors in the deep darkness of a subarctic night. This night, however, was just dark and cold. She walked up the driveway, the dry snow squeaking loudly with each step. She went up around the log barn full of month-old lambs as yet unweaned and down a path worn in the grass and dirt from years of taking this same course. 

As she entered the lambing barn, her hand crept up the wall to the light switch overhead. It was utter pitch in that barn, and she didn't take one more step until the light was on. You never knew where a ewe would pick to lamb. As the room brightened, the ewes in their lambing pens, which were against the walls and ringed the room in orderly succession, blinked and squinted until they too adjusted to the light.

Lucy stood scanning the center section where they ewes awaiting birthing had free run in the thick, clean straw. She always left the radio on CBC, the only station available to them other than the local one which had been off for hours, as she felt the voices and music kept the ewes company. Their sheep were used to human contact and appeared to find it a calming and protective influence in their lives, so she thought the radio was good for them. 

As she looked to see if any ewe had lambed or was in the process, she heard the DJ, as part of his late night chatter, talking about the upcoming Challenger shuttle flight later in the morning. He was recounting the number of setbacks this particular launch had experienced so far. She paid it little mind as she heard a ewe in the far corner talking to her as yet unborn lamb, maa-ing out her foreknowledge as to what was about to happen. What it meant to Lucy was she wouldn't be getting back to bed for a while.

She checked to make sure the new born lambs and their mums  in the pens around the wall were fine. She picked up the occasional newborn to snuggle  against her cheek, smelling its fresh soapy scent, and tickled by its tiny lips that keep searching every inch of her face for something that might yield milk. She laughed softly at their determination dear and gentle as it was.

The ewe was now pawing the straw, bunching up a nest that she would soon lie in. Lucy slide down the wall into the soft straw herself and waited.

Once again the music stopped as the DJ offered some further difficulties with the shuttle. He was talking about how cold it was in Florida that morning.

She snorted. “Cold, she said, “What could they possible understand about cold?” She was accustomed to talking out loud as hers was a quiet world with few human interactions across the course of any day. Sometimes she’d treat the sheep as listeners and tell them about what was troubling her, or the jobs she had to get finished that day or ask them about their day, with her filling in possible answers. She loved sheep, their benign, joyful natures, and enjoyed their company. A ewe not ready to lamb, wandered around the room looking for tidbits of scattered alfalfa leaves, and then approached Lucy, moving up close enough to touch nose to nose. Lucy scratched her ears until the ewe decided to trundle on.

The DJ, obviously wanting someone to share this compelling interest he had in space flight, broke through the music again like an earnest newsman. His likely only audience at that hour was possibly six or so truckers on the lonely northern McKenzie Highway and a few shepherds perhaps. He alerted them to recent developments where the Thiokol engineers had informed the shuttle powers-to-be there could be potential problems with the O-rings that sealed the joints of the shuttle’s rocket boosters. They were vulnerable to failure at low temperatures.

Lucy listened a little more carefully for she knew about cold, its insidious nature and its power to ground human beings utterly. The station had picked up a broadcast coming from California. It offered snatches of conversation from various constituencies responsible for this amazing flight machine. She listened not just to their words, but was struck more by what they weren't saying. She lived in a world of frankness, after all the local farmers were in the same business, knew the same problems and didn't miss anything that happened in the community. To people whose fate rests in the hands of seeing things for what they are, she thought her neighbors could do a lot better job getting to the truth than these engineers, managers and NASA.

The ewe had lain down in her bed and was now breaking water. Lucy left the radio program to attend to her. Already two pointed hooves were pushing out. Aah, she thought, looks straightforward. Maybe I’ll get back to bed. But when the lamb didn't make any progress after ten minutes, Lucy washed up, and proceeded to enter the ewe and see what was wrong. 

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Digging

I've always loved short stories.  I write them occasionally. This one takes place in the far north of Alberta, with two people struggling with the lives they've chosen, only to find out how death changes everything and nothing in one fell swoop.

by Christina Carson

It was the act of digging in the small window box planter that did it. Pushing the soup spoon down into the dark, root-tangled soil. Turning it bottom for top. Chopping up the clods. It had a rhythm to it and a meaning. It amazed her, the impact it had. It was the hypnotist, dangling the watch in front of her eyes, her entire body entranced in the memory. She stood staring off her fourth floor landing into the late evening sky of Vancouver, awash in the score of years she had so recently left behind.

Joanie had difficulty imagining how the act of digging could create such a powerful revisiting. It wasn't even foot on shovel sort of digging this time. Just a kitchen spoon mixing about in her six inch deep planter. She noticed she used the same motion, however. She felt the same finality even, as when she had turned the garden each fall or plowed the fields before winter shut down the world. Brutal, frigid semi-arctic winter. Cold that could freeze expiration in mid breath, which could make spittle hit the ground with a clink. 

She returned to taking out the summer petunias. The last three cool weeks had them showing their age. She was readying the box for winter primulas. How she loved to walk out in gray rain-filled mornings and see their colors. Bright dots of scarlet, royal purple, gold, rose and virgin white in among the Kelley green leaves. The first winter she was here, it amazed her to see flowers blooming in December and January and February. She pushed the spoon in right to the bottom and brought up a big chunk to turn over and break apart. Maybe memories are stored in muscles, she wondered. She had read something to that effect once. What was the brain for if that was the case? She continued digging and turning and crushing the clods between her fingers, letting the freed dirt trickle out, until all was loose and fluffy again. With open palms, she evened the surface, with the dignity of a Baba smoothing her apron upon rising. In the quiet that followed, the memories flooded in.

.....

"Jim, for Christ's sake, can't you put your boots on the mat? Is that so much to ask?" Joanie, arms laden with groceries, was trying to push the door open with her foot. Taking her foot back, she finally booted the door with enough force that it moved the debris behind it and banged into the wall. Once on the other side, she kicked it back in the opposite direction. Not hearing it click shut, she swung her hip against it finalizing the closing. She stood for a moment in the pocket of cold that is created by heat rushing out an open door into a winter's afternoon. Her fogged glasses blinding her momentarily, she waited still holding the groceries. All the while, Jim sat on the chesterfield watching a country western video. He had learned long ago how to ignore her unspoken needs.

It was a small house. Too small to hold out against the clutter that arises when you share the world with stock. Everything that could be damaged or rendered useless by freezing has to be brought inside during winter. Cans of paint, wood preservative, animal vaccines, motor oil, an endless list of them that stockmen share their lives with once the weather turns cold. It makes houses cave-like. It makes people crazy.

"Don't help or anything," she threw at him as she tripped over the step up into the kitchen. "I can't imagine what it would be like to have a man in my life with an ounce of thoughtfulness in him," she mumbled more to herself than to her husband in the next room. It took her a while to stop slamming the groceries on the counter as she took them out of the bag. Her anger finally ebbed into resignation and each action became more and more mechanical, until robot-like she shut the last cupboard door. She pulled the top of the coffee maker off and put in a clean filter. Bending to the shelf below the sink, she grabbed the coffee tin and ladled fresh grounds into the filter. The pot already contained water so she pushed the button. She crossed the kitchen and sunk into her chair at the table, her hands supporting her chin as she tried to stare out the ice-encrusted windows. The old chrome set had seen many years. She had re-upholstered the chair seats twice now, stuffing them full with new foam and choosing from a limited selection of vinyls at the hardware store. Each time she tried to capture a new look like she had seen in the Better Homes and Garden magazine. She'd change the curtains at the same time, hoping for a miraculous renewal to an ancient room in an equally old house.

Winter produced a sort of stupor in people. It wasn't so much the temperature, though that didn't help. It was the darkness and the drabness, endless grey against a backdrop of white or black. Joanie lit a cigarette and let the curling smoke carry her away. She wondered where the smoke went. Did it eventually end up on some tropical beach? Or get breathed in by dancers at Mardi Gras? Or float off into the upper reaches of space to rub shoulders with the universe? It felt good to let her mind go. Anything to lift her out of this tiny little backwater. To separate her, if only momentarily from all the shattered illusions of life and love and marriage.

The coffee maker stopped gurgling. She pushed herself up from the table and hunted for a clean cup. Pouring the dark liquid into her cup, she got lost again, this time in the coffee’s flow. As the coffee splashed onto the counter, she was jolted back.

"Shit," she hissed through her teeth, pulling the damp dishcloth out of the sink. "You want some coffee?" she called to her husband.

"Yeah." It didn't seem to her that he ever felt this same sort of isolation that haunted her. She didn't get it. It didn't make sense. Was there something the matter with her? Was she somehow inadequate? She sighed and filled his cup. As she came round the corner, she fixed her eyes on the TV and handed him the cup without even looking. He glanced up at her as he reached for the coffee. He knew that stare. He'd seen it often. What did she want? What would make her happy? For sure he didn't know, and he'd given up some time ago worrying about it. Life was okay. What do you expect, he wanted to ask her? No use to get all head up about something you can't have. Seemed pretty straight forward to him.

She pulled her eyes back from the video and keeping them high above his vision, turned back to the kitchen, humming the tune from the tape being played.

"You gone to work tomorrow?" They often had these conversations, across two rooms.

"Maybe, if the weather smartens up. Broke three chains already this week. That hill's got too much steepness to it, especially with the wind we've been having."

"What's the matter? Getting chicken in your old age?"

When they weren't busy with the cows, Jim felled for various lumber outfits in the region. It was tough work, particularly when the snow was as deep as it was this year. It wasn't work to be taken lightly either. The bush was unforgiving. For those who got tired or careless, the trees reminded them, sometimes for eternity. Jim knew he was getting old for this work. Forty isn't old at a desk. But you remember you're forty when you work all day in the cold, in the deep snow, in the bush. Some mornings when he'd roll out of bed and start the day off hurting and tired, he'd worry. Deep down inside him there was a fear....

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