Homer got to his feet. “I guess it’s become a bit of a hobby with them. I told them years ago they could hunt here.” He grabbed his jacket from a hook on the door. “Hard to untell them now.”
Five or six years into Joanna and Richard’s marriage, Joanna had lunch one afternoon with a colleague from the college. They went to a newly opened café a few blocks away on Sherbrooke Street, near Atwater. Joanna’s mother was in failing health at the time, and the woman told her that she’d lost both her parents in the past couple of years. The woman had inherited her parents’ house, an old-style ranch on three acres at the city’s edge. A young man and his wife had approached the woman immediately after her widowed mother died. They impressed her with a story of how they were about to get married, looking for the perfect place to start a family. The woman had sold the house to them without putting it on the market. The couple immediately sold the property to a city realtor, who promptly turned the three acres into a subdivision. The realtor was Richard. Joanna hadn’t taken Richard’s last name, so the woman did not know he was her husband.
Joanna kept the story to herself for a long time, not knowing how to bring it up, and not knowing if she wanted to. She deliberately avoided becoming better friends with the woman, fearful that the truth would eventually come out. Of course, when Joanna finally broached the matter with Richard, she did so during a late-night argument, the details of which she couldn’t remember. When she had accused him of screwing over her friend, Richard mocked her. If the woman had done due diligence, he said, she would have known that subdividing was not only possible but quite likely. Besides, if Richard hadn’t moved on the property, somebody else would have. He told her this in his usual forceful manner, silencing her with his tone.
The trucks continued to appear throughout the winter. Joanna occasionally heard gunshots in the distance. There were days when she saw the trucks but didn’t hear shooting; those days were rare. Neither Ben Dubois nor any of the others pulled into their driveway again to show off their kills. That might have been because Homer was rarely outside anymore, the combination of sickness and cold weather keeping him housebound.
Joanna did have an encounter with Dubois in town one day, in the parking lot of the food market on Bridge Street. In a town of less than a thousand people, it was inevitable that they would see each other eventually. It was late in the afternoon when Joanna walked out of the store, carrying her heavy grocery bags, and spotted Dubois talking to another man in the lot. His truck was parked next to Joanna’s Honda — not coincidentally, she guessed. He watched her as she approached, his face red with drink, his tiny eyes narrowing. The other man sulked off the moment Dubois diverted his attention, like he had been waiting for a chance to take his leave.
“There’s the girl,” Dubois said. “How’s Homer?” It was more of a demand than a question.
“Getting by.” Joanna opened the hatch and started to place the groceries inside. Dubois drew near; without turning, she smelled the whiskey on his breath.
“Some of us been thinking we’d like to come see him. Thing is, we don’t feel all that welcome.”
“Why not?”
“Makes you feel that way, being judged.” Dubois paused but couldn’t help himself. “Especially by the likes of you.”
Now she turned on him. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me. You’re from here, same as the rest of us. Don’t matter if you go off and live in the city awhile, until you figure out you can’t hold onto a man and you come running back. You’re still from here. But all of a sudden, you act like we’re beneath you.”
It surprised her how angry she became. There was something about him, some inborn visceral hatred, that she recognized, and it was the recognition that bothered her, more than Dubois himself. It was as if she wanted the concept of someone like him to be completely alien to her.
“Nothing is beneath me,” she said. “I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”
And then she was in the car, pulling away, not looking over to where he stood, legs spread, his mouth slack with liquor, an ever-present grin on his face.
Christmas came, and then New Year’s, neither day delivering anything remotely festive. Joanna cooked, but Homer had no appetite, so she ended up eating too much and tossing things out.
In late January, the doctors decided that further treatment would be pointless. Homer passed his days in the front room by the fire, first in his leather recliner and lastly in a bed the hospital brought over. He read mostly nonfiction books, and watched movies Joanna got from the library in Ormstown. He said he wanted to make it until spring; he died the day after Easter Sunday.
The funeral was on that Wednesday. They filled a little church with friends and neighbors, mostly people Homer’s age, some still upright and relatively strong, but most bent and worn, leaning on canes or walkers. Homer’s last surviving sibling, Doug, didn’t make the trip from Victoria.
Richard wasn’t at the funeral either. For that Joanna was mostly grateful. She didn’t want to see him at a time when she was so emotionally fragile, but his absence clarified his incredible selfishness. He knew her father had died — she had left him a message on his cell, and had regretted the call immediately after she put the phone back in its cradle.
Richard did show up six weeks later, pulling into the driveway in a black BMW Roadster Joanna had not seen before. She was planting string beans in Homer’s vegetable garden along the south wall of the barn. When she saw him, she moved the sticks and twine over a row, running the corner of the hoe to cut a valley in the fresh-tilled dirt. As he approached, he made no comment about what she was doing. If someone were to ask him about it later, Joanna would bet that he wouldn’t remember what she was doing when he saw her. He said hello and got to it.
“I’ve been wondering how you were getting along,” he began.
“Fine,” she said. “Thanks for asking.”
“I meant with the farm,” he elaborated. “How close are you to putting it on the market?”
Joanna straightened. “You thought I might list it with you?”
“No,” he said. “Find somebody local. I need to know when you’re going to sell.”
“Why do you need to know that?”
He gave her an incredulous look. “We’re married, Joanna. The place is half mine. I could use the equity for a project I’m starting.”
Joanna looked at the cutting edge of the hoe. “You think you own half of my father’s farm?”
“The law thinks I do,” he replied. “We were together fourteen years.”
“And now we’re not.”
“Now doesn’t matter,” he said. He waited a moment. “You’d better talk to your lawyer.”
She went back to work as he got into the BMW and drove off.
After a few minutes, she sat down on the grass in the shade of the barn. She felt like she’d imagined him there, that it hadn’t really happened. In the garden, the beans were partially planted, the rest still in the envelope by the watering can. She realized she’d been planting the garden without even considering if she’d still be there when things were ready to harvest. She was planting the garden because it was time to do it.
She got up and started for the house. It was past noon, and she thought she would eat something. Movement caught the corner of her eye as she rounded the old machine shed. A skinny brown coyote was crossing the field to the west of the house, the field planted in red clover just six inches high. The animal was mangy, its tail nearly bereft of fur.