Garden of Eden by Sharon Butala Page A

hailing distance to him. And Mary Ann’s hands are big and thick too. The only time Iris’s hands show any signs of having done work is during gardening season when her nails break off and the skin grows rough from the constant scrubbing to keep them clean. Her diamond wedding ring and the sapphire, a gift from her parents on her high school graduation, glimmer gently at her and she thrusts her hands into her coat pockets.
    Looking at them, though, reminds her that soon she’ll be able to start planting her garden. She sees herself dropping the seeds from a mound in her palm, the dark furrows accepting them as she kneelsin the slowly warming earth, losing herself in the rhythm of planting. The bumping of the truck reminds her that she won’t be planting at the farm this year. No use if she isn’t going to be there, nobody to weed or water it, and the deer eating whatever grows. She wonders if you can plant in forest soil, and doubts it. This is the first thing — other than all her comforts, she thinks wryly — that she really cares about she’ll have to give up, and she wonders briefly if it’s not too late to ask Luke to turn back.
    “I can’t thank you enough for doing this,” she says instead. Her resistance has crumbled, her anger at Barney has been replaced by her need to touch him, to lie full length against him, skin to skin, breathing in his breath, her mouth on his.
    “I don’t mind,” Luke says. Startled, she glances at him, having forgotten her own remark. “Mary Ann wouldn’t let me do nothing else,” and he makes a noise that might be laughter. She recognizes his words for the usual sentiment: If you do something that might be seen as nice or good, it’s only because the women made you. And yet, it’s true. Even Luke in such matters yields to the wife he otherwise, apparently, pays no attention to. She considers that power women seem to have, what it is, where it comes from, in a world otherwise run by men.
    Or maybe he really doesn’t mind. Maybe he’s looking forward to seeing his son, especially now that Barney has returned to the cowboy life he was raised in. Her face heats up at this thought. The truth is, she has always felt a sort of perplexed guilt at stealing him from his family. Now she realizes Luke and Mary Ann had expected that from his bride; what they hadn’t expected was that their own son would turn his back wholly on their way of life and everything they stood for, trading in the ranching way of life so casually for what seemed to them — to all of them — its opposite, farming. But surely she’s not responsible for that? Surely that was his choice?
    “I tell ya,” Luke says. “Don’t know what he’s thinking about. Past fifty and still can’t make up his mind what he wants.” He shifts gears, usually an effortless push and click but this time it’s a rapid and hard movement, and when she glances at him, his lips have tightened. Change the subject, quick.
    “How is Mary Ann these days?” she asks brightly. “Her arthritis not too bad?”
    “Pretty sore mornings,” Luke says.
    “The doctor’s no help?” He shrugs, she struggles on. “And Fay and the kids?” Has she gone too far, asked too many questions, begun to seem nosy to touchy Luke?
    “Don’t see too much of ‘em. Fay lost her job in the drugstore when it closed. She’s looking around. Barry’s at home.”
    “Oh?” Iris is startled, and bites her tongue to keep from saying more. Fay’s husband hasn’t been home regularly for years.
    “Getting too old to rodeo,” Luke points out, as if he knows what she’s thinking and isn’t going to pretend to her everything is fine between his daughter and son-in-law. Recognizing this for what it is, that she’s finally family, she feels only exasperation. “Guess now he figures he needs his wife and kids. Got a job at that feedlot outside Swift Current.”
    “Quinn will be glad to have him home,” Iris remarks, thinking of him at twelve when he