Patterns of Swallows Read Online Free PDF

along only to the child welfare people, but somehow the
story leaked out into the town grapevine with more or less accuracy.
    It was no great scandal by that
time. The story hardly survived a week on the vine and then
withered. It was more or less what people had expected. Rudy
Chavinski's first wife (though wife was a courtesy title) was a Cree
woman from northern Saskatchewan. She'd borne him a child but hadn't
cared to raise it, and Rudy hadn't cared to stay long in northern
Saskatchewan. He'd married his second wife shortly before moving to
Arrowhead and settling on a farm there. The farm was in the wife's
name because it was her money that had paid for it, and she'd
insisted on it being in her name.
    It must have been bitter gall to
Rudy Chavinski to live on his wife's money and his wife's farm, but I
suppose he did what he had to. The second wife had a little money
even if she did have a sharp tongue. And she was willing to take on
the child. There were reasons Rudy married her, and there were
reasons she married Rudy. Sharp tongues don't marry easily even with
a little money.
    Such was Ruth's history.
    The problem about history is
that it has such a way of influencing our presents and our futures
against our control.
    *
    * *
    No foster home could be found
for Ruth in Arrowhead. Willing homes were filled up throughout the
entire province just then with the orphanage out by Victoria having
been requisitioned as a hospital for the returning, wounded soldiers.
The wards of the orphanage had all been put into foster care. The
war was nearly over, but the foster homes were still full. And
moving Ruth to another province would have meant extra paperwork and
complications.
    The child welfare people checked
out the non-aunt's story and learned from Ruth's birth records that
she did indeed come from a mixed heritage. When the child welfare
authorities learned what had been obvious to townsfolk for years,
that Ruth was Métis, they had another avenue open to them.
There was a residential school available right in the Kissanka
region. It was seen as the ideal solution by all the townspeople and
presumably by the child welfare people, as well.
    At twelve, Ruth left Arrowhead
to go and live in the residential school. She didn't return to
Arrowhead until she was nineteen, legally an adult, no longer a ward
of the government of the province of British Columbia, and entitled
to her inheritance from her mother. She never talked about her time
away, not even to me. And no one liked to ask her about what she
didn't see fit to say. Ruth had that effect on people. They held
their tongues. Not about her, but around her.
    *
    * *
    After Ruth stepped off the
greyhound bus and set foot in Arrowhead for the first time in seven
years, she set about moving back into the house and the farm her
mother had left to her. It was all her mother had to leave. All the
money she'd had had gone into the farm.
    The house had been empty for
seven years except for the squatters who had moved in and out at
will. The place was not livable when Ruth inherited it, but she was
hard-working and determined. And it was home. Where else would she
go?
    The land, all except the acre or
so surrounding the house, was quickly leased to a neighbouring
farmer, a prosperous dairy man, who was glad of the chance. He'd
been pasturing his cattle on it unofficially for years already, not
seeing the harm in it and not knowing if Ruth would ever return to it
(though if he'd known Ruth, he should have known she would). Now
he'd be able to put up proper fencing for the hilly pasture land and
make hay on the flat.
    So the farm land was taken care
of. And the house was still standing. But that was about all that
could be said for it.
    Ruth felt as near crying as
never happened when she saw what she was up against. The steps to
the porch were rotting. There was hardly a window left intact. The
front door was off its hinges. The interior walls had yawning holes
the size of a man's large