The Moons of Jupiter - Alice Munro [108]
They came out of the swamp and on either side was wasteland, churned-up black earth, ditches, uprooted trees. The road was very rough.
“I’ll back you, he says. So I went ahead and took the bet.” Mildred read the crossroad signs: “Dead end. No winter maintenance beyond this point.”
Albert said, “Now we’ll want to turn south.”
“South?” said Wilfred. “South. I took it and you know what happened? The Soo came through and beat Sudbury seven to four!”
There was a large pond and a lookout stand, and a sign saying “Wildfowl Observation Point.”
“Wildfowl,” said Mildred. “I wonder what there is to see?” Wilfred was not in the mood to stop. “You wouldn’t know a crow from a hawk, Mildred! The Soo beat Sudbury seven to four and I had my bet. That fellow sneaked out when I was busy but the manager knew where he lived and next day I had a hundred dollars. When I got called to go back on the Kamloops I had exactly to the penny the amount of money I had when I got off before Christmas. I had the winter free in the Soo.”
“This looks like it,” Albert said.
“Where?” asked Wilfred.
“Here.”
“Here? I had the winter free, all from one little bet.”
They turned off the road into a rough sort of lane, where there were wooden arrows on a post. “Hawthorn Trail. Sugar Bush Trail. Tamarack Trail. No motor vehicles beyond this point.” Wilfred stopped the car and he and Albert got out. Grace got out to let Mildred out and then got back in. The arrows were all pointing in the same direction. Mildred thought some children had probably tampered with them. She didn’t see any trails at all. They had climbed out of the low swampland and were among rough little hills.
“This where your farm was?” she asked Albert.
“The house was up there,” said Albert, pointing uphill. “The lane ran up there. The barn was behind.”
There was a brown wooden box on the post under the arrows. She opened it up and took out a handful of brightly colored pamphlets. She looked through them.
“These tell about the different trails.”
“Maybe they’d like something to read if they aren’t going to get out,” said Wilfred, nodding toward the women in the car. “Maybe you should go and ask them.”
“They’re busy,” Mildred said. She thought she should go and tell Grace and Vera to roll down the windows so they wouldn’t suffocate, but she decided to let them figure that out for themselves. Albert was setting off up the hill and she and Wilfred followed him, plowing through goldenrod, which, to her surprise, was easier than grass to walk in. It didn’t tangle you so, and felt silky. Goldenrod she knew, and wild carrot, but what were these little white flowers on a low bush, and this blue one with coarse petals, and this feathery purple? You always heard about the spring flowers, the buttercups and the trilliums and marsh marigolds, but here were just as many, names unknown, at the end of summer. There were also little frogs leaping from underfoot, and small white butterflies, and hundreds of bugs she couldn’t see that nibbled at and stung her bare arms.
Albert walked up and down in the grass. He made a turn, he stopped and looked around and started again. He was trying to get the outline of the house. Wilfred frowned at the grass, and said, “They don’t leave you much.”
“Who?” said Mildred faintly. She fanned herself with goldenrod. “Conservation people. They don’t leave one stone of the foundation, or the cellar hole, or one brick or beam. They dig it all out and fill it all in and haul it all away.”
“Well, they couldn’t leave a pile of rubble, I guess, for people to fall over.”
“You sure this is where it would have been?” Wilfred said. “Right about here,” said Albert, “facing south. Here would’ve been the front door.”
“You could be standing on the step, Albert,” said Mildred, with as much interest as she had energy for.
But Albert said, “We never had a step at the front door. We only opened it once that I can remember, and that for Mother’s coffin. We put some chunks of wood down then, to make a temporary step.”
“That’s a lilac,” said Mildred,