A Recipe for Bees (18 page)

Shortly after Valentine’s Day, Karl came home saying Olaf had hired Percy Martin for lambing. “Not him,” said Augusta.

“Why not?”

What could she tell him?
I don’t want him working in case he saw me with Joe; in case he opens his big mouth
. Percy was a good worker, when he was sober. “I don’t trust him.”

“You won’t see anything of him. We won’t see him much. He’ll be working the nights, once the lambs start coming.”

But Karl was wrong. One morning, just as she was getting dressed to meet Joe, Percy Martin mounted the stairs to the second floor, smelling to high heaven of liquor. When she opened her bedroom door, he stopped his progress up the stairs for a moment and stared at her. At first she said nothing and stared right back. He was a tiny man with unnaturally short legs, a hairless bundle of bones, though when he walked he moved with the nervous, frightening speed of a rodent. He chewed something—tobacco? gum?—all the time; a film of saliva was always at the corner of his mouth. Under the stench of booze he stank the same high unwashed bachelor stink of the sheep herders Karl hired in the summers.

“What are you doing here?” she said. “Get out.” She flung out her arm and half expected him to turn tail and run, but Percy Martin took one slow step up the stairs after another.

“Hear you’re trying to get me fired.”

“I have a right to my say. I don’t want a rapist working on this farm.”

“Don’t get high and mighty with me, lady,” he said. “I know you.” Augusta took a step back. “You don’t think I saw. But I saw.”

“What?” said Augusta, but she already knew. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re a fancy woman, ain’t you? I seen you with that man in the city. And with the Reverend. Seems like you got men all over. I figure my money’s as good as theirs.”

“Get out of my house. Now.”

He kept coming. “Is it babies you’re after, then? I remember Karl got mumps when he was grown. He can’t give you babies, can he? All’s you had to do was ask. I can give you babies.” He held out his hands as if to say,
Here I am
.

Augusta made a grab for the bedroom door, to shut it on him. But he leapt for her and pulled her by the waist towards him. She stumbled down to the first step and they wrestled there for what seemed like an eternity. She pushed one hand away and another was there, grabbing at her clothes, roughing her skin, pulling her hair. She gave one tremendous push and suddenly Percy Martin was falling, arms and legs flung up and over. He hollered as he hit the walls, the steps, and landed on the floor at the foot of the stairs. She thought him dead. She wished him dead. But he got up from the floor and headed off outside. He didn’t look back at her, because she was already laughing from the top of the stairs, laughing hard and high from someplace deep inside her; laughing and laughing though her outsides trembled, though damp fear stained her blouse.

Joe was waiting on her that day. “Where you been? I thought something happened.”

“A man came into the house, while Karl and Olaf were out. A man who saw me here with you. He came right into the house while I was upstairs and offered me money. He thinks I’m a whore.” Augusta started crying and began to stand, to leave. “I can’t do this any more. I’ve got to get out of here.”

Joe grabbed her by the wrist. “Sit down,” he said. “Here.” He handed her a napkin and she blew her nose. “Did this man touch you?”

“He tried. I pushed him down the stairs.”

Joe laughed. “You pushed him?”

“It’s not funny. He scared me. And he knows about you and me.”

“Did you tell the boy about this?”

“No. He won’t be back until this evening. I can’t tell him.”

“You have to. This man is dangerous.”

“He works for Karl and Olaf. He’s one of the herders.”

“Then you’ve got to tell him.”

“What can I tell him? I don’t know what to do.”

Joe took both her hands in his. “We’ll work this out.”

“No. You can’t have anything to do with this. Don’t you see? You’ve got to stop coming here. If I deny things and then someone else sees us, that’s it. Where would I go? What would I do? And what if they found out your name and they phoned and got your wife?”

“Oh, Christ. Who is this Percy guy? I’ll punch him out.”

“That would make things worse.”

Joe released her hands as the waitress came by with menus and coffee. After she was gone, Augusta and Joe sat at the table in silence, staring off in opposite directions. “So you think we should stop seeing each other,” said Joe.

“And neither of us should ever come here again, to this café.”

“Too bad. It was growing on me.”

“Yeah.”

“I love you, you know.”

“Are you ever going to leave your wife?”

“No, probably not.”

“Then what good does it do telling me a thing like that?” They sat in silence for a few moments longer and then Augusta stood and, without even saying goodbye, fled the café.

She tried giving up her Saturday outings with the Reverend, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “Something you’re not telling me?”

“No. Nothing. It’s just, Olaf gives Karl such a hard time about me fishing with you. He thinks the town will talk.”

“I see.”

“It’s silly, I know. I just don’t want you hurt.”

“I think I understand.”

Augusta saw that he did understand, that he’d guessed everything, or enough of it. Augusta looked down at her hands. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“If there’s something you want to talk about—”

“No.”

When she got home from talking to the Reverend that afternoon, Olaf wouldn’t talk to her. As they had little to say to each other at the best of times, she didn’t really notice this until supper time, when she offered him the bowl of peas. “Peas?” she said. She might have been talking to a wall for all the reaction she got. Olaf went on chewing and staring out the window.

“Peas?” she said again, louder, thinking he hadn’t heard. But he had heard; he was ignoring her.

Karl took the bowl. “Father, Augusta asked if you wanted peas.”

“I’ll have peas,” Olaf said.

“Whatever are you angry over now?” said Augusta.

Olaf chewed his peas.

“Father,” said Karl. “Augusta asked what’s the matter.”

“She knows what she done. I’m not going to say any more.”

It was at that point that she realized Percy Martin had got around to talking to Olaf. Olaf never talked to her again, not until their last big argument. Karl became interpreter between them, and it was a fussy business getting anything done that way. Augusta had to talk through Karl if she wanted anything of Olaf, and Olaf simply operated as if she no longer existed, as if she were invisible.

Things got very bad after that. Men who had once tipped their hats to her now took liberties as they would never have dared before. Other women’s husbands rubbed their crotches into her backside as they passed by her in store aisles, or groped her as she stood in line waiting to pay for her groceries. Doing chores in town became a game of dodging; she was aware of each man’s approach, and stepped off the sidewalk, onto the street, to avoid him. She shook her head away from exploring fingers and learned to fold her body into itself, to make it smaller than she thought possible, so a man passing by would have no excuse to touch her. But she found no defence against the women. The women threw hard stares at her. Some even spat at her feet as she passed them on the sidewalk. Their weapons against her were words, whispered to each other in coffee shops, in grocery aisles, in church women’s league meetings.

It was his wife, Lilian, who first brought the gossip to the Reverend’s attention, gossip she’d heard at the church
women’s league meeting. Likely it was Martha Rivers who started that ball rolling; she was a leading member of the league. “They’re saying Augusta is soliciting,” Lilian told him. “To make a little money, as Karl isn’t bringing anything in. They’ve gone back to calling that place the Whorehouse Ranch, instead of the W.H.”

The Reverend stormed into the next assembled meeting of the ladies of the league and, with Lilian dressed so beautifully in blue at his side, gave them hell. “I heard your talk about Augusta Olsen. I don’t know who started it, or why, but I’ve never been so ashamed of the lot of you. She’s stuck way up there, and who of you has visited her? Or paid her a kind word? Instead you make up stories about her. Making her life miserable. There are those in this room—in this town—whose minds are smaller than a thimble. I advise you to keep your mouths shut, unless you’ve got something worthwhile to say, and get on with your meeting.”

The Reverend told her all about it at the next Saturday’s fishing, his face flushed with excitement. Augusta interrupted him as he repeated the bit about their minds fitting into thimbles. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why not?”

“They’ll think you’re involved. They’ll read things into our fishing trips.”

“I suppose they’ve done that already.”

“But you getting mad like that won’t stop the talk. It’ll just inflame it. Now Martha Rivers and her gaggle will have another bit of gossip to hand around, how you defended me. They’ll speculate on why.”

“But Lilian was right there with me, standing by me.”

“You don’t know what it’s like, do you? I could lose everything. Olaf could kick me off the ranch.”

The Reverend laughed. “That would be the worst, wouldn’t it?”

“This is serious. I’m afraid you’ve made things worse.” And she was right. That was why those boys thought they could throw rocks at her the next Saturday, when she was all tidy for town. She was walking down the wood plank sidewalk by the train station, heading for the truck, when she heard the first stone land by the heel of her shoe. Then another. Then one hit her shin. She turned. Three boys ran off, stones dropping from their hands. They knew there was no one willing to protect her. The Reverend’s defence of her had fuelled the flames; if he did more he would be implicated, if he wasn’t already. Karl would never say anything. Olaf would have picked up a stone and joined them if he’d been there. There was nothing she could do. She had put up with poverty and insults, and now rocks. She’d put up with a husband who didn’t touch her for fear of disturbing his father. Where would she go, she wondered, if Olaf saw fit to throw her out of the house? Manny and the cold silent farm were all that awaited her, and she doubted that he would take her back in any case. She had made her bed. If she chose not to lie in it, she would have to move to the city. She would have to find work. All she knew in the world was cooking and cleaning. And where would she find the funds to set herself up in some other place? She didn’t even have bus fare.

W
HEN
A
UGUSTA FOUND
she was pregnant she was, in turns, thrilled and terrified. She longed for a baby of her own, but she knew the child couldn’t be Karl’s. In the three weeks it took to find the courage to tell Karl, she brooded over the day Helen had told them she was pregnant. It had been a Sunday; there had been roast beef, scalloped potatoes, a layered jelly mould for dessert. As Harry Jacob was now back at the reserve, her mother took more time on their meals. “I’m having a baby,” she said.

Manny stopped eating, his fork in mid-air. “A baby? We can’t be having a baby.”

“Well, we are.”

Augusta wondered why Helen chose to tell Manny then, with her sitting right there with them. Shouldn’t a wife tell her husband about a pregnancy first, privately, before telling the children? She felt as she did when, at night, she heard the rhythmic thumping of her parents’ bed legs against the uneven floor overhead; she was listening in on something that shouldn’t be overheard.

“We’re too old for chasing around with babies,” said Manny.

“Well, there’s nothing I can do about it now, is there?”

“Isn’t there some woman thing you can do?”

“A woman thing?”

“To stop it?”

Helen stared at Manny until he went red. He pushed his plate away from him.

“That’s not going to do us any good. Here it is. We’ve got to accept it.”

Manny sat back and crossed his arms. His nostrils flared as he breathed in. “It’s mine, is it?”