CHAPTER ONE: ONE OF THOSE DAYS
Torkel “MAC” Macleod opened his eyes on a dark room. Outside the wind was howling as usual for this time of year. It fingered along the eaves, tugging at anything that might squeak or rattle. He thought it was strange the way he would be sound asleep and then instantly awake. The moon that brief hours ago had been so bright that it lit up the curtain with shards of silver flame had moved on, leaving his bedroom in shadows of blue and grey.
“Where am I now and how did I get here?” This seemed to be the ‘universal question’ and sometimes it wasn’t easily answered. With the room so dark and being unable to see its features, he could be anywhere. Often he dreamed though these dreams seemed so life like, that he was in places he had never been. It was disturbing in a way because though the locations changed in the dreams, they always seemed so familiar. Maybe it was because he dreamed about them so often or had anyway. Those dreams had reoccurred less and less over the years, even the dreams where he was back in Africa. Now he knew he had been there, his wife could vouch for it. That is where they had met and married. Still he didn’t feel at ease until he could finally identify familiar items in their proper places about the room. The one thing that he knew was missing was his wife. She was not with him most nights but at work. He looked across her empty half of the bed at the clock.
“Shit!”
It was already seven minutes after six. He tossed back the thick blankets and stood straight up out of bed. He hated it when he slept in. Elf would be home from the Pincher Creek Hospital where she was the night Nurse, at six thirty and he liked to have the door unlocked, the kettle on and be finished with the bathroom by the time she drove into the yard. “Elf” of course was his nickname for her. He thought she looked like an elf, especially when she smiled. The fact that her first name was actually Elfrida might have had something to do with it. It was an Old English name she had explained which meant “Elf-Advice” or advised by Elves. Mac said that is why she always knew what he was up to even when he didn’t!
In the dark he pulled off his pajama bottoms, dropping them on the bed before folding the blankets back. In the dark he pulled his work shirt on over his head the same way he’d taken it off, without undoing the buttons. In the dark he scooped up the rest of his clothing and padded in his sheep-skin slippers around the bed, through the doorway and into the bathroom. As usual, he peered out the bathroom window to see the stars that winked down over the old house, sheds and corrals of the former farm where they lived. Only this morning the moon, in the western sky obliterated the fragile starlight with its silver flare and lit the place up like a flood light. He could see the horses munching at the bale of hay in the lea of the Caragana and Ash tree wind-break where the bare branches tossed back and forth as the wind roared over top.
Before dressing Mac left the bathroom turning on the light as he did so. Now as per his routine, he switched on the porch light, unlocked the front door, hit the button on the TV remote for the morning news and then fed the gold fish in the tank beside the entertainment center. Next he passed through the kitchen turning on the light at the far side before going into the back porch to feed Koko the cat. Only after he had filled the kettle and readied the tea pot did he return to the bathroom. He sat on the toilet with his head in his hands and his eyes closed for a moment. Everyday seemed the same lately, nothing changed. Work was the only thing the two of them ever did these days. It seemed that they owed the bank for everything they had. So Mac worked as a pen rider at the big Feedlot halfway to town during the day and Elf worked at night making rounds ready to respond in the E.R. if necessary. She also had a part time job two days a week as well. Her “hobby” was working as a cook at the seniors’ home. They always seemed to be passing each other at the door.
It hadn’t always been like this. When they were younger they did things together. Hell, they had met during the bush war in what was then Rhodesia. Those were exciting times. When they were forced to leave, after Mugabe came to power, they brought their little family home to Alberta. There seemed to be time then, when the kids were growing up for hiking and riding in the mountains or swimming in the river. They had even taken a trip as a family to England where Elf’s people had ended up after fleeing Zimbabwe. Now with just the two of them there never seemed to be time for anything but work.
Mac ran the hot water into a face cloth and soaked the sleep out of his eyes. Fifty six years, this month he had been looking into this face. He recognized those eyes as his own but the face they were in, belonged to some old guy he really didn’t like the look of. Where was the head of flaming red hair, the hallmark of his branch of the Macleod clan? The red had all turned traitor and surrendered into white while the blonde strands had become grey highlights. His forehead seemed have extended a fair ways up as well. The scar from his old horse accident, sort of in the shape of a check mark and slightly dented in seemed more obvious there, where he combed his part above the left temple. Mac found himself seeking it out feeling it with the tips of his fingers more often these days. He didn’t remember the accident, something about a wreck involving a cougar attack while riding lease on the eastern slopes, but it was so long ago in his ‘Cowboy’ days, it didn’t matter anyway.
The tea was wet when Elf pulled into the driveway, the car lights reflecting through the window onto the mirror in the living room. Mac put his cereal bowl down and met his wife at the door. They chatted back and forth about the various events and happenings she had heard about in town as they made their way to the kitchen. Reaching out Mac caught Elf as she bustled about putting away the shopping she had picked up the evening before. They leaned against each other both holding on tight. The only sound was the ticking of the wall clock. Mac kissed her softly on the neck before they found each other’s lips.
“I have to take my pills” Elf still had the ghost of her Rhodesian accent after all these years. She released herself from his arms, “I am so sore and tired. I have to get to bed. What time are you home from work today?” She called as she moved back and forth between the bathroom and the bedroom. “I’ll have supper ready for you when you get home”.
As the bedroom door closed Elf called out “Good night!”
“Love yah later, Elf!” Mac gave his usual response.
“Later,… always later!” Came her standard reply from behind the door.
Pulling on his coat and cap Mac stepped out into the crisp November morning. The eastern sky was fairly bright by now so he had no fear of stepping on the kittens that scampered about his feet as he poured out fresh cat food into one dish and water into another. Escaping from the kittens he walked toward the corrals. The horses nickered. He answered back, talking to the two animals with his “Mr. Ed” voice that brought them to the fence. From here they followed along as he made his way to the feed shed. Drawing back the bolt and swinging open the door, more kittens scurried into hiding in the dark corners.
“Okay you Hillbillies” he sighed as he reached for more cat food and water on a shelf, “Keep your fur on, you’ll get fed too”. Next he used a cup to scoop rolled oats into two rubber tubs for the horses. He carried the tubs out to the corral talking then scolding the two horses until they had sorted themselves out into their proper positions before placing one tub in front of each animal. On the way to fill the water trough Mac stopped to listen to the quiet. It was funny how the wind could be raging all night but it always seemed to calm in time for him to do his chores. This time of year, or in the spring, a flight of geese or even swans would drift over, almost within reach, to land in the dugout across the fence on the neighbors land. Coyotes would often start their yipping this time of day and if he saw them Mac would yell at them to leave his cats alone. Today there were Hungarian Partridge clucking and squawking from the Caragana hedge along the south side of the yard. Off to the west the full moon, now much paler in the morning light settled between the peaks of the front range of the Rocky Mountains. Slowly the snow, airbrushed onto the mountain crags and faces, blushed from pink to orange as the sun’s rays stabbed over the prairie and hills along the eastern skyline. This was the time of day that made him love living in Alberta. He had lived in the Pincher Creek area all his life. Except for those years when his parents had moved them as kids to Calgary and of course, the two and a half years he lived in Rhodesia. Soon enough the wind would come back up, usually by the time he was in the saddle at the feedlot. Tears would stream down from under his glasses as the west wind tried to tear off his skin. At times like that he would try and remember moments like this.
“Pincher Creekers are tougher than most folk”. Reluctantly, Mac gathered the empty horse tubs and made his way back up the front steps, through the tumbling kittens and into the house.
There was still a bit of time before he had to go to work, so Mac wandered into the back porch which had become his “office”. Piles of paper littered every flat surface and some of the floor. His many attempted novels, stories, poems and songs sat in heaps waiting for the time and attention Mac had so little of these days. He flipped over a sheet of paper and recognized one such song. “If only he knew how to really play that old guitar buried under the paper instead of just bang away, if only he could write the music”, he mused, “Some of this stuff wasn’t half bad”. Mac sighed at the thought of the lost opportunities as he turned on the computer to check his e-mails. Mac had felt that he could not justify the expense of a broadband high speed connection and satellite T.V.so he went through the routine of connecting through “Dial-up”. Slowly his emails loaded onto the screen. Mac and Elf had three children and both daughters and his son had left messages. He clicked the first and saw a link appear with the short message from darling daughter number one,
“Is there something you’re not telling us??”
He wondered what that was supposed to mean. The link was to a video on Youtube and Mac knew from experience that it takes forever to download a video on Dial-up. He decided to look later and clicked on the next message.
Here too he found a link to Youtube, although a different one. His Son’s message was also brief, “Did your computer geek friend in Calgary, do this for you?” Again, Mac was confused but for the second time he wasn’t going to waste the time waiting for a video to download so, click, next email.
Once more a link and a message, this time from Darling Daughter Number two, “You have a doppelganger!”
“What the,…”, he murmured.
This time he did click on the link and waited as slowly the web site put itself together on his screen. At length the tell tale black box came up with the spinning wheel. Mac looked at the clock, it was time to go. ”Damn” he swore, “no time!” He closed out before shutting the computer down.
Mac hated his job. He hated every minute that his job took from “something he’s rather be doing”. Unfortunately that “something” usually meant puttering around the acreage, riding his horses, or trying to write something in his office, and that wasn’t going to help pay the bills. There was a time right after they’d come back from Africa that he had a chance at a place of his own. His Aunt Lucy had died and his cousin Tom was ready to pull the plug on ranching. Mac and Elf didn’t have the money, even to put a down payment on the ranch and Cousin Tom wasn’t interested in a partnership. So the ranch in the Gladstone valley was sold and Mac had to go to work for other people to make a living.
As he drove his old 4x4 out of the yard, his only pleasure was singing along with the radio tuned in to the Rock station. He loved the tunes with the heavy beat and crunching guitars. No tapping on the snare drum or plinka-plinking quietly on the guitar for him. The singer too had to be putting his heart into the words, even if they were obscure or repetitive as they often were these days. Mac would join right in belting it out if he could make out the words or sing harmonies if he could only understand the chorus.
This morning was crap though. The wind came back up as expected blowing pea-gravel off the drive like it was fired out of a shotgun. His job, along with about a half dozen other cowboys, was to ride his horse through fifty pens containing approximately 20,000 head of calves in total, all being fattened for market or ‘Back-grounded’ to be fattened later. He was to look for the lame, the sick and the injured. Any animal that was doing “poorly” he would pull from that pen and guide the “patient” to a metal clad building known as “the Hospital”. Now-a-days he would be called an “Animal Health Technician” but few of his generation had ever taken the courses or gone to the college. Their “school” had been years in the saddle and thousands of head of cattle passing under their care. The new generation wore the blue coveralls and waited in the “Hospital” to render assistance to those Mac felt were in need. Some days it seemed like he had been doing this in rain and snow, wind and heat for far too long. This was one of those days.
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