“Alex’ Woodshed” by Ronald Mackay
Alex Macdonald, my first neighbour, gave me an urgent wave from the end of his farm lane as I raised my plough before turning my tractor 360 degrees to open the return furrow. Concerned, I stopped, switched off the engine, and ran to the fencerow that separated my field from the concession road and Alex’ farm. The spring-fresh air and the scent of newly turned soil was invigorating.
“We’re gonta town.” Alex croaked. “Gerald’s comin to pick me up.”
I looked west. Two kilometres away, Gerald’s enormous lime-green Galaxy 900 was emerging cautiously from his narrow farm lane and heading sedately in our direction.
“Gonna come?”
“I can’t,” I said. “I want to get this field ploughed while the weather holds.”
“She’ll be fine tomorrow!” Alex encouraged me to abandon my task.
At dawn, I’d listened to the radio. Rain was forecast and, unlike in Scotland, the forecast in Ontario was accurate. I also knew that Alex, as did most of my neighbours in Glengarry County, used the incantation ‘She’ll be fine tomorrow’ as the routine excuse for putting any task on hold.
“I should finish before nightfall.” I gestured to the rectangular four-acre field.
Gerald’s enormous lime-green car drew to a stately halt. Gerald smiled. “Gidday, Alex! Gidday, Ron.”
With a gesture, I wished Gerald good day and made to return to my tractor.
“Wait up Ron,” Gerald called. “Alex and me, we’re gonta town. Wanna come?”
“I need to finish this field.”
“She’ll be fine tomorrow!” Gerald’s voice rang with optimistic assurance.
“I ’ready told him!” Alex scowled disapproval of my earnestness.
“I want it done today.” I turned back to my tractor.
“Lunch in the hotel. Then I’ll drive you back. Ye can finish easy this afternoon.” Gerald reassured me. Alex nodded approval.
To call the establishment in the village of Alexandria ‘the hotel’ was misleading. In the early ’70s, in the half abandoned main streets of most Eastern Ontario villages stood an equally derelict hotel that. In previous generations it had served commercial travellers. Today the barroom alone stood open to the public, the watering hole for the bored, the unemployed, the ne’er-do-wells, and reluctant farmers who postponed farmwork to exchange stories of calamity and disaster – never their fault – over a glass regularly refilled with draught beer. Lunch was a packet of crisps.
“I must finish today,” I persisted. As well as my farm, I worked a full-time job in Montreal.
Unconvinced, diminutive Gerald emerged from his enormous limousine and joined Alex at the fencerow. “What’ll she be, Ron? Four acres?” He gestured to my field that hadn’t been ploughed for 40 years. “Ye ’ready done a acre. So, after lunch? Three or four hours and she’ll be good!”
Though it was more than a year since I’d bought this abandoned farm on the 6th Concession, I hadn’t yet identified the ‘she’ in whose name my congenial neighbours made confident pronouncements. Invariably, ‘she’ promised to facilitate important farm tasks and lighten hardships. To say ‘She’ll be good!’ was to prophesy positive outcomes for everything from dry weather to the results of using the wrong draw-pin to attach a loaded trailer to a tractor drawbar. But when rain ruined a hay crop, or the draw-pin broke or the trailer spilled it’s load in a ditch, resigned faces put the mishap down not to ‘her’ but to faulty weather forecasting or a cheap draw-pin made in China.
My neighbours seemed entirely unconcerned that ‘she’ rarely kept ‘her’ promises. It seemed to me that failure was their abiding and tolerated companion.
“I started at first light. I’ve got little done because my plough keeps hitting stones. Then I have to stop and remove them.” I pointed to the boulders in the bucket of the front-end loader I kept permanently attached to my tractor.
“Ron’s tractor woke me ’fore six.” Alex scowled disapproval.
Gerald’s dismissed my good intentions with a wave. “Ahh, come with us Ron.” He gestured to my loader full of boulders. “She’ll be good. You got all them stones. Likely now, she’ll have none left for you.” He smiled as if he really believed his own fiction.
They drove east towards Alexandria, two tiny heads in an ancient outsize car – the kind old Glengarry farmers loved best. They’ll be wondering at my misplaced enthusiasm for trying to bring my farm back into fruitful production, I reflected. Earlier generations had opened virgin land. With hard work, settlers had won a living for their families. Their kin had passed challenging farms on to whatever family member was unable to find an alternative to such a punishing way of life.
Alex had once explained his views on farming to me. “Donald A and me got the farm when father died. No debts. A bit of everything we did. When the cheese factory closed, we hadda sell the six cows. But Donald A and me got the pension at 65. We’re better off than ever. Now, I only gotta split hardwood for the stove. Resta the time, I sit in the woodshed. You could do the same.”
Alex failed to convince me. At 38 to his 78, I expected more than the woodshed could offer.
Later that afternoon, when I spotted Gerald’s grand Galaxy wend its erratic way back from the village, I still had more than an acre left to plough. Countless trips to the fencerow to dump boulders had delayed me.
Other than wave to Gerald when he stopped at Alex’ lane end, I focused on my furrows. As I made my turn south, I watched Gerald’s Galaxie zigzag towards the west and Alex totter up his solitary lane, a six-pack in each hand.
I finished my south-bound furrow and turned north. Alex had reached his woodshed. I knew he’d cache the six-packs in their hiding place and maybe drink one alone. The rest he’d keep ready for the next neighbour who arrived to explain why their day had started badly and why storytelling might be the best way to spend the rest of the day. After the first beer, they’d be confidently predicting, ‘She’ll be all right tomorrow!’
Just as I was about to raise my ploughshare and make my 360-degree turn, I saw Alex stop, then stand stock still. He let both six-packs drop, turned and scrambled back down the lane as fast as his legs and the hotel beer would let him.
Quickly I assessed the situation. It had to be a black bear! How best to discourage it from chasing Alex? But I saw nothing, only Alex’ startled face.
I leaped off my tractor and ran to the road. Alex stood trembling. I checked again. No bear! I supported Alex as we struggled towards my farm, alarmed at his sobs.
By the time we reached my place, he’d quietened. I sat him in the summer-kitchen and made tea while, head on chest, he got his breath back.
“Better now Alex?”
He shook his head. “Can’t go back!”
“No?”
“Never!”
I waited for him to explain. He sat silent, so I prompted. “A bear?”
He gulped air.
I waited.
“Donald A…”
I wondered if he was going to tell me how Donald A had taught him how to escape a hungry bear. But no!
“Got to the woodshed,” Alex croaked. “And right there, he was, sat on a block!”
I waited some more.
“Donald A!” Alex squeezed his eyes tight, then opened them. “Flames bleezin all round his head and shoulders.” Alex gestured to show how high the fames had been leaping. “Bleezin he was! Flames, all red and yella!”
Imitating his brother’s voice, Alex continued. “Come with me Alex! Come with me to hell!”. He gestured to show me how Donald A had tried to coax him. He paused then repeated the gestures. “Come down into hell with me, Alex!”
I was lost for words.
“Can’t go back.” Alex voice was firm. “Gonna sleep here!”
And so, Alex stayed the night. Next morning he still wasn’t back to his surly self, but he managed to croak out an order to me. “Walk over to my place, will ya? Pick up my six-packs!”
For seven weeks, Alex was my guest. At the beginning of the eighth he moved into Alexandria. As a paying guest, he moved into the house that Rudi and Ewa had bought with the insurance money they’d received as compensation for their fire.
