CHAPTER TWELVE: “CLIMBING BACK ON THE HORSE”
Sitting on the new baled hay stacked in the loft Mac retreated into his music. He dusted off a song he had started quite some time before during a previous crisis. The words and music came to him anew and somehow they seemed much more poignant. Being busy with his own solace, he failed to notice Gette withdrawing more and more into herself as well. For the first week or so she along with Deedee and Anja would go down to the bend in the Red Deer River. They would strip down and wade or swim across to the deeper channel on the far side. Returning, they would lay under the cottonwoods while they dried.
As of late Gette started staying after the others were finished or go alone to swim. She said it reminded her of when she was a child and they used to swim in the nearby Tisza River. Sometimes she would immerse herself in the cooling flow but more often she would sit and try to be soothed by the lapping sound of the water and the sunlight playing on the ripples. Other times singing, Gette would wander barefoot along the shore. She thought a lot about home and her life and wondered if it was all worth it. Gette remembered as she walked alone the guys warning her about dangerous quicksand that would “swallow up a horse and rider in seconds”. She wondered what that would be like. In reality it sounded horrible but if it was quick and if she was never found,...
Maybe she could be like Shakespeare’s Ophelia and float down the river in madness until the water filled her voluminous clothes and pulled her under. It might be pretty watching the sun on rippling water only from underneath! If only she had some voluminous clothing! Why did dying have to be so complicated?
The thing that always stopped her in the end was not so much the world going on without her, though that too made her sad. It was the pain and heartbreak her death would cause Anja, Deedee and most of all Mac. He had worked so hard to keep her alive. Her happiness always seemed his first concern. Mac would be devastated if she were to kill herself. He did have Anja though, and Anja would always pull him through. She on the other hand,...had no one!
Another day and another night went by without so much as a word from Lorne. Soon another week had passed. If he would even call to say that he had thought it over but could not bring himself to love her anymore, it wouldn’t be any easier but at least she would know. As it was, it seemed he had driven her from his thoughts, boarded over the memories they shared and hardening his heart, was getting on with his life without her. This was too much!
That morning Gette made up her mind. Avoiding Deedee and especially Anja she made her way down to the shore. It was another glorious summer day with high wispy mare’s tail clouds in an azure sky. Sunlight sparkled on the greenish river as it in turn reflected the dancing leaves of the cottonwoods in the warm gentle breeze. She had on one of her favourite short dresses and held her best high heels in one hand. Around her neck was a silver heart shaped locket that her brother Peter had given her a very long time ago. This was so if they ever did find her body,… they would know whose it was.
The water was clear and cool as it rose up her leg to mid thigh. Clouds of river silt swirled up around her feet with each step like dust storms on the Puszta only in miniature. Looking up at the sky for one last time Gette lay back in the water and let the current lift her off the bottom.
