Stillwater. A novel excerpt by Darcie Friesen Hossack

Beet Roll (Chapter 2 of Stillwater)

Marie adjusted the waistband of her skirt, a consequence of Mrs. Schlant’s pancakes. Too much bran always made it tighten. So, for that matter, did Lizzy and Daniel whenever they disagreed. And since both of those things were true today—too much friction and too much fibre—it was difficult to know which to blame for the tightness that had begun to cinch her insides like the strings of a purse.

“How about we play a game while we drive?” Marie offered toward the backseat of the car, where Lizzy and Zach silently, if not patiently, passed the time. Both shook their heads and Marie turned back to face the road.

It had only been an hour or so since they had driven away from Stillwater. Already, though, daylight had become gritty and turned to dusk.

Without a word, Daniel switched on the headlights. They needed to be cleaned, Marie thought. Even on high beams, they barely spilled enough light for something to come into focus the moment it became too late to swerve. It could be a deer, Marie imagined. Or a rock the size of a chesterfield, slipped from an unstable bank. Or it could be one of those cheerless, soiled people who seemed, for no reason—thumbs in, they carried nothing—to drift between towns along the shoulder of the road.

“Anyone need to get out?” Marie asked a short while later when a glow on the horizon told her they were nearing the city of Vernon.

If she were in charge, they’d pull over at the Dairy Queen on the highway. That’s what her own father used to do when she was a girl and he had taken her into Swift Current with him, whether it was to buy a used tractor or just to knock on watermelons together until they agreed on the perfect one.

“Zach? Lizzy?” she said over her shoulder as the Dairy Queen came into view. “Bathrooms?”

“I’m okay,” Zach said.

Lizzy, reading by booklight, didn’t reply, and before long they were swallowed back into an evening that seemed to have grown darker for every minute they had driven under streetlights. Alongside an inky pool that was Kalamalka Lake, a bank of lights sped toward them. Marie sucked in a gasp of a breath, holding it until a logging truck carrying a jumble of stripped-down trees had passed. “That one was close,” she said after they swept through its wake.

“It was fine, Marie. Or maybe you want to take over and drive us the rest of the way?”

No matter how long she lived in British Columbia—more than seventeen years, now—Marie had never been able to get used to its roads. She had learned to drive on the Prairies, with its stick-straight lines. BC was all ups and downs and hairpins that jumped out of the middle of nowhere and seemed to appear in a different place every time. And then, today, there was the weather. The snow from the morning had melted, but the temperature was dropping again. The water it left on the roads could freeze and turn into black ice.

“Mom, do we have anything to eat?” Zach said, and Marie relaxed a little at the sound of his voice.

“Why don’t we see what Mrs. Schlant put in our bag?” Marie reached between her feet for a paper grocery sack the director’s wife had handed to her on their way out of Stillwater.

“You’ll find a beet roll on top,” Mrs. Schlant had said. “It’s a new recipe, so next time you’re here, you’ll let me know what you think.”

Marie had promised she would. As she felt inside the bag, herhead was nearly on her knees when the front passenger tire of thecar thumped over something on the road.

“Cripes, anyway!” Marie said. “That could’ve been a . . .” She settled herself back down. Reason told her it was just a clump of ice, shed from the mud flap of a semi that had come over Roger’s Pass. But ever since she’d read a story about a mother out east who
had placed her infant son in a brown paper bag and left him on a highway, Marie imagined an abandoned baby under every bump in the road. “Everyone okay back there?” she said, giving herself an excuse to count her own children.

“We’re fine,” Lizzy said and turned a page.

Marie found Mrs. Schlant’s beet roll. Keeping a slice for herself, and one for Daniel, she passed the rest back to Zach.

Marie faced forward once again and touched her hand to her belly where her own seatbelt should have been fastened securely across her hips. For months now, the mechanism to pull the strap down had been stuck, but whenever she pressed Daniel to take a look, he told her that he’d get to it soon. “If the Lord decides it’s your time, Marie, a seatbelt won’t add an extra minute to your life,” he said. To which Marie replied, “Maybe He gave us seatbelts so He can worry about other things.” Which was as good as making sure it would never get fixed.

To keep her mind off the road, Marie bit into her beet slice, expecting, despite the name, to taste jam-filled sponge, and maybe a hint of something that resembled cream, reminiscent of the delicate cake and sweetened preserves her mother used to make. Instead, the beet roll lived up to its description. If they did end up at Stillwater,
the food was something she would have to get used to. And she couldn’t see how there would be many opportunities to go into town to get a little something sweet.

But when she passed Daniel a slice of what amounted to cooked beets rolled up and baked into dense bread, he ate his and reached for Marie’s, too.

Marie wiped away a few crumbs from her skirt before digging into the bag of yarn she travelled with. With a few twists, she began to cast chunky knots off the end of an oversized crochet hook, and her breath, which had risen high and tight into her throat, began to deepen and slow.

“You haven’t said much about the place,” Daniel said after a while, reaching across the space between them to touch Marie’s hand. She flinched and dropped a stitch. Even in so little light, Marie was self-conscious about her hands. As she saw them, they were all rough and red from years of scrubbing pots and potatoes. Just flesh, skin and knuckles with circular wrinkles like elephant knees.

“Oh, well I . . .” she said.

“I know it’s a big change,” Daniel said, returning both hands to the wheel. “But once we all get settled in there, it won’t take any time at all for it to feel like home. Don’t you think so, kids?”

From the back seat, a glutinous silence stretched out until Zach, finally, gave it some slack. “They have a nice kitchen,” he said, allowing Marie to dip her crochet hook back into the scarf she had begun to make. “And Mrs. Schlant knows a ton about food.”

The yarn slid and looped its way through Marie’s fingers, reminding her of the way they’d felt the first time Daniel had ever touched them. Slender and elegant. Piano hands. Even though her fingers had always been too short to span an entire octave.
From behind, Marie felt her daughter’s feet push into her seat. A reminder. “Lizzy, do you want a scarf that’s long enough to wrap a few times or just once?” she asked over her shoulder, casting for a reprieve.

“What colour is it?”

“You saw when I packed it this morning. It’s that purple.”

Lizzy was quiet for a moment. “Maybe just make it for yourself?”

Kilometers passed without anyone saying another word. The dark shapes of mountains and trees continued to unspool along the sides of the road.

“So do we think we could get ourselves out there by the end of the month?” Daniel said, more sternly than before.

“Mom,” Lizzy said.

“Well,” Marie began. “You know, those kids there. The school isn’t what we might have hoped. Less than we thought. And when I tried to give the children each a candy, they looked at me as though I’d offered them an onion. It’s not right for kids to not at least want a little sweet.”

“I see,” Daniel began to grip and ungrip the wheel. Little strangling sounds of skin against plastic filled the silence. “So, because a few children don’t want your pocket lint, I should what?”

“We don’t even know what will happen at work. Everything could be fine. Some people say Covid is still going to go away, so why don’t we just wait and see?”

For a moment, Daniel lifted both hands off the steering wheel, then slammed them back down.

“There is a lot to like out there.” Marie used her most placating tone. “But maybe we should wait a little while. Lizzy could finish up her schooling where she is, and we could see whether things get a little better for you at—”

Daniel’s fingers flexed open, his knuckles flashing white in the dark. Only the heels of his hands were touching the wheel, and Marie mistook it as a gesture of surrender.

“It’s not even all that long until she’s done,” she added, leaning against the passenger door. “I bet she could finish by the end of this school year, with all the extra classes she’s been taking. Isn’t that right, Lizzy?”

“That’s another eight months, Marie. I don’t have another eight months. Lizzy, this sounds a lot like you. Did you put your mother up to this?” He strangled the wheel a little tighter.

“Is this seriously a done deal? I don’t know if you saw, Dad, but all of those children’s eyes orange from all that carrot juice. And, really, that many people all living in the same house? It’s weird.”

Marie lifted her hand to her mouth and tasted yarn as she bit away a shred of skin next to a nail. Lizzy had nicked the taut string of Daniel’s patience and she could almost hear her husband’s thoughts taking shape as she continued.

“Dad, I won’t learn anything out there,” Lizzy said, leaning into the space between the front seats. “I could teach every class in that place.”

Marie, hands ravelled up in purple yarn, gently pushed Lizzy back.

“I’ll tell you what, Lizzy,” Daniel said. “School isn’t everything, and it worries me that you think it is.”

“Fine, then. I’ll just become a housewife.” She switched off her booklight with a tiny click.

In the silence that followed, it began to rain, small, spattering drops that quickly became half-frozen splashes drumming wetly against the hood and roof.

“Kalamalka Lake,” Marie said, just under her breath. “Duck Lake. Wood Lake.” She counted the various waters between Stillwater and home. By feel rather than sight, she dipped her crochet hook back into the scarf. Okanagan, Kalamalka, Duck, Wood. One, two, three, four. Over, dip, over, draw. Marie knotted their names into the yarn of the scarf. Soon, however, she had to unravel several rows she couldn’t account for.

Around a particularly tight bend, Marie slid sideways and, unrestrained, grasped Daniel’s arm to steady herself. “I’m glad we’re almost there,” she said with a nervous laugh.

Silence.

“Dad, you’re speeding,” Lizzy said, and after a moment, Daniel slowed to just under the limit.

The car lurched over a frost heave and Marie was lifted slightly out of her seat. Her hands flew out in front of her as she landed, and the seat seemed to count every unnecessary ounce against her.

Mennonite thighs, Marie thought, trying to regret the varenyky and cream gravy of her childhood. She had already been soft by the time she met Daniel. Two children later, and even though she had agreed to a vegetarian lifestyle, her belly had taken on the consistency of punched-down bread dough.

Marie relooped her yarn and tucked back a tendril of hair that had escaped from the bun at the back of her head. No longer light brown or dark blond or even grey, now it had become a shade that, whenever she washed another clump of strands down the shower drain, reminded her of the dead mice she found every autumn in the kitchen glue traps Daniel set inside her cupboards.

“Marie, why don’t we try some of that bread next?” Daniel said. The rain had stopped, although the road remained splashy with puddles. “Lizzy, I’m sure a future biologist will appreciate this. At Stillwater, they make their bread from sprouted grains. We can use
the rest for tomorrow morning’s toast.”

Marie could tell he was offering an olive branch and said a little prayer that her daughter would accept it.

“That’s botany,” Lizzy said.

“Why do they sprout it?” Zach asked, accepting the loaf Marie passed back. “Does it have better flavour that way?”

“You guys tell us,” Daniel said.

From the back seat came a crinkle of paper, after which Marie feltthe remaining loaf slide over her shoulder from behind. She took it and removed two slices, handing one to Daniel and keeping the other for herself. She was still working hard on her first bite when Zach offered an opinion.

“It’s like loofah!” he said with a note of horrified wonder.

Marie’s stomach flopped.

“Think of it toasted with some margarine and honey,” she said, encouraging him to say something nice.

“Honey on loofah is still loofah.”

“Nutty. That’s the word. It’s nutty.” She reached back into the bread bag and was about to offer everyone a second slice when Daniel gently lowered the bag back into Marie’s lap.

“What about you, Lizzy?” Daniel said.

“It tastes healthy. But Mrs. Wroblewski’s bread is a thousand times better and it’s healthy, too. And we don’t have to move to a commune to get it.”

“Kids, you know if it were up to your mother, we’d eat nothing but white bread. Fried white dough. Boiled white dough. And white gravy over it all.” He was laughing, but it felt like a trap. He and Marie had long ago agreed not to confuse the kids with ideas from a different time in her life. It was a promise Marie had occasionally broken, when
she found a particularly good watermelon to share with the kids, by frying up small batches of rollkuchen to accompany it when Daniel was at work. Mennonites always ate rollkuchen with watermelon in the summer.

“Not everything about where I came from was so bad,” she said, having nearly managed to keep the thought tucked in. “The kids might want to know about where they came from someday.”

This time when the car went over a heave in the road, Marie’s body lifted and came back down with a painful thump.

“The only thing anyone needs to know is where they’re going,” Daniel said, the words falling like hot coals from his mouth. “And if you keep up with this, I can’t be responsible for where that might be.”

Marie slipped her yarn-tangled hand behind her seat to find her daughter’s foot, surprised when Lizzy reciprocated with her own hand. She wanted to reach for Zach, as well, but knew she couldn’t do so without being noticed. “If the two of you could just agree,” she said softly, toward her lap.

“Mom, it’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it anymore,” Lizzy said and pinched her nails into Marie’s palm.

Marie felt Daniel’s foot twitch on the gas. “Well, let’s just get home, then,” he said.

“Fine with me,” said Lizzy.

Daniel picked up speed. Faster and then faster, round curves and through gullies while the road, it seemed to Marie, threatened to slide out from beneath them at every turn. Her hands had begun to tremble, and she slid them under her legs. She had a habit of reaching for the door handle when startled, and if something made her do that now, without a seatbelt, she would spill right out onto the road. It was uncomfortable, though, sitting on her hands. Her hangnails caught on the polyester of her skirt. She had no lotion in the car to soothe the dryness that caused them.

She longed to be home, massaging Vaseline into her fingers while seeing the kids off to bed. Or home in her mother’s kitchen, where hands that handled lard never needed a pump of Jergens. Or simply back at Stillwater, where Mrs. Schlant kept a glass bottle of something that smelled of rosemary next to the homemade soap on every sink.

Wood Lake was finally alongside them, with its too-fast bend in the road up ahead. Marie reached for her seatbelt and gave it a tug. It clunked inside the housing and refused to be moved.

“For God’s sake, Marie,” Daniel said and his arm flew across her. He grabbed the seatbelt and yanked it hard three times. “There,” he said as a shard of plastic cracked away from the door and the belt suddenly unspooled.

There was too much slack in the shoulder, but Marie clicked the latch in gratefully and snugged the belt tightly around her waist.

“Dad, let’s just get home safely,” Lizzy said as the rain returned as slush. “We’re already really close. It’ll just be a few minutes extra if we go slow.”

Marie began to hum. A squeak of a sound at first, and barely audible. But as the notes seeped from her, they grew louder until they finally flattened out into a hymn her mother had taught her to sing whenever she felt far from home. Nearer my God, to Thee, nearer my God; thin and thready, like a bow dragged across the strings of a
dried-out violin.

“For crying out loud, Marie,” Daniel said. “You’d think I was trying to kill us.” And though it hadn’t seemed possible to Marie that they could go any faster, he coaxed yet another measure of speed from the car, whose frame began to rattle.

“I don’t know if God would want you up there if you sing like that,” Daniel said. It was an attempt at a joke, and Marie rewarded it with a little laugh.

“Well, I just think—” Marie said but didn’t get to finish.

Daniel accelerated into the bend and Marie was shoved against the inside of her door like a load of wet laundry as the road and mountains spun around them. For a few seconds, her chest felt tight, and her head clunked heavily from shoulder to shoulder.

Something struck Marie’s side of the car with a terrible noise. Glass from the passenger window shattered and was followed by the sudden shock of coming to a full stop. Marie’s body, only half restrained, was flung forward and her hands, raised to protect her face, smashed into the windshield before falling into her lap.

At first, Marie didn’t recognize the cold that began to climb toward her knees as water from the lake inched its way up her legs. Even as it began to lift them, and she pushed them back down with hands that made crunching sounds like bags of loose marbles,
the kind she used to take outside on warm summer days.

“O, mein Gott,” she said, lapsing into Low German as the water reached her waist and recognition crept in. “Daniel?” she said, with water at her neck, but when she turned to look for him, he was gone.

“Zach? Lizzy?” she said and inhaled a breath that filled her nose and mouth with lake.

BEET ROLL
1½ cups warm water
¼ ounce active dry yeast (1 packet)
¼ cup honey
3 tbsps baking margarine, softened
3½–4 cups whole wheat flour
½ cup wheat bran
½ tsp kosher salt
2 medium beets

Sprinkle the yeast over top of warm water and set aside in a warm place to proof for 5 minutes. Transfer to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the
dough hook attachment. Add honey and margarine.

Mix in 2 cups of the flour and the salt until moistened. Beat on medium speed for 3 minutes. Add more flour, just until dough pulls away cleanly from the sides of the bowl.

Turn out and knead on floured surface, adding remaining flour, until dough is smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. Place dough in large greased bowl and cover with a clean tea towel. Let rise in warm place until doubled in size, 30–45 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook two medium beets in salted water until tender to the tip of a knife. Rub away the skins using a paper towel. Chop into small dice, and mash those slightly with a fork.

Lightly grease a sheet pan. Punch down the dough and roll it out to the size of the sheet pan. Spread beet over the surface, leaving room along the edges. Roll up like a jelly roll and transfer to the greased baking sheet.

Cover loosely with a tea towel and let rise in warm place until doubled in size, 30–45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Uncover roll and bake 40–45 minutes or until roll sounds hollow when lightly tapped.

Return to Journal

Darcie Friesen Hossack is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers. Her short story collection, Mennonites Don’t Dance (Thistledown Press), was a runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Award, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Ontario Library Association’s Forest of Reading Evergreen Award for Adult Fiction. Citing irreverence, the book was banned by the LA Crete Public Library in Northern Alberta. Having mentored with Giller finalists Sandra Birdsell (The Russlander) and Gail Anderson Dargatz (Spawning Grounds, The Cure for Death by Lightning), Darcie is represented by Rob Firing at Transatlantic Agency. Her first novel, Stillwater, was published by Tidewater Press in Spring 2023. Darcie is also a seven time judge of the Whistler Independent Book Awards. She lives in Northern Alberta, Canada, with her husband, an international award winning chef.

WordCity Literary Journal is provided free to readers from all around the world, and there is no cost to writers submitting their work. Substantial time and expertise goes into each issue, and if you would like to contribute to those efforts, and the costs associated with maintaining this site, we thank you for your support.