macCLOUD FALLS, page 12
He never knew how present she was at those times. The trigger seemed to be stillness, the warmth of that stove, maybe the singing of the kettle or the aroma of the tea that she habitually stewed in the pot at the edge of the hotplate. But he couldn’t manufacture the circumstance. Maybe there was something in that room that reminded her of the old days? She would only talk when she felt ready and what constituted readiness he could never quite establish, though he knew the main ingredients and could sense when she was in a mood to begin. But he was aware he had to sit still, almost fade into the mirk of the unlit room, to become a shadow without form. Then she might, of her own volition, start to talk a little about the events and the people that had stayed with her, even into her eighties, as she wandered mentally. He had realised, after a while, that if he spoke English, he would rouse her from her distant reverie, she would become aware of the present again and lose trace of the daydream. But if he sat quietly, still in the gloom, she would talk, and if he asked a question in Scots, she didn’t seem to realise who he was and would sometimes answer, though she took little direction. Sometimes he was able, briefly, to turn her monologue into a one-sided interview, and ask her questions he wanted to. Yes, in the gloom of fading light at Kirkliston one evening, he asked his mother, in the voice her senility trusted: ‘Why did ye merrie Dad, an him a widower that muckle aulder than ye?’ And she had answered, ‘I only loved wance.’ And he knew that to be true, his mother’s wartime sweetheart had a special private place in their bungalow even when his father was still alive. It wasn’t a shrine, but he existed, this dead flying officer hero, in little glimpses, a subtle manifestation of his imagined glory, and his father accepted that, for some reason. He knew, as a child growing up, that this dead stranger was still with her – and was even present then in Kirkliston, a few months from the end – while his father she seemed to forget latterly, as if the sixteen years of their marriage had melted away or had never really been, in the catalogue of her romantic life, all that tangible an object.
He remembered, lying there on that hotel bed five thousand miles from home, in the intense heat of the day, the cold grey city all those years ago and how his mother’s hair went white around the time his father died. She was much younger than his father, and she soon had it done in the latest style, and with her new black and white Coco Chanel clothes, silk headscarves, and a little lipstick, became both older and younger than before – because she was a young widow, because she was no longer living with a husband a generation older whose fashion sense had always been at best Edwardian. The farm girl was very much the woman about town for a few years. Her young son became her companion. She took the driver’s seat and the boy became her navigator in passenger seat.
When he rose from this hypnagogia, the astral plane gave way to an evening far from the grey city of his memory. Although the river roared, the village beyond was at peace – a barbecue plume rose from somewhere among the scattering of buildings on the far bank. The houses sat secluded in tree-lined lots. He gazed through the zoom on his camera, scanning over it. No sign of people out front, just, he imagined, the whirr of the sprinklers he could see, the hiss of summer lawns.
He left the baking chamber of Room 14 and went downstairs in search of his absent host. There was no one on the desk - he rang the bell as instructed but no one came, so he went outside to see if anyone was there. It was like a western ghost town.
He walked across from the inn, beyond the highway, to where the railroad corralled the line of stationary CPR rail trucks he’d seen earlier. It was so long that it ran out of sight around the bend. But nothing pointed as far back as Sigurd, he of the original crossing, the pioneer American who was the first to drag a hawser over the river and fix up pulleys to transport the gold-hungry strangers headed up-country. He’d built a sizeable business in logging and trade further down the canyon, until his partner died young in brawl, and left Sigurd sickened of the country. So he moved back home to Washington state and founded a town there instead. In Sigurd’s Crossing he’d left his name for a while, till it became MacLeodville, then MacLeod Falls, and finally, simply Cloud Falls.
Looking back at the inn, the Scotsman wondered if it was really, as the Gold Country brochure suggested, the 1862 building. It wasn’t the shape of the one in the picture archive, not from this angle, but an adobe structure. It was built like the one further along the road to the south, the original community hall built, he knew from his research, in 1907 in the cement and stone architectural style that Archibald Clements – at that time known as “the owner of Cloud Falls” and perhaps the man responsible for the name change – had learned about on one of his many excursions to Mexico. Clements’ family had come from Cornwall, had emigrated to Ontario in 1855 when Archie was three, settling later in Alberta where the family grew up. Young Archie moved west to what was in the process of becoming the city of Vancouver, when he was old enough to strike out on his own. He bought up property cheaply, and profited as the conurbation grew rapidly after the CPR chose it as the terminus for its great transcontinental adventure. At one time or another, Clements had owned the Hotel Regent, the original Pantages Theatre, then the Theatre Royal, Billie’s Poolroom, Hastings Rooms, and many buildings on Columbia Street. And after making his fortune, he moved north into the sunny interior in the 1880s, and then up the canyon property by property, until he acquired the estate of Jimmy Lyle’s uncle, John MacLeod, who had died suddenly.
The original Morton’s hotel, Clements had promptly closed in favour of a newly built one near the railway line, higher up the riverbank by some hundred feet or so, with hollow cement blocks and stonework suitable for the dry climate. It was just as well, as the old hotel building was swept away two years later in a flood that also carried off Sigurd’s original crossing. So the Scotsman was fairly sure his current residence was the 1892 structure, not the one from thirty years earlier but part of Clements’ Mexican-inspired dream, built long after gold fever had been dispelled by disappointment.
Whatever its history, in 2011 it was a pretty little terracotta-coloured building, quaintly charming even, like the set for some old Western movie, sublimely framed by the great rocky crown of bare mountains louring over the valley floor. A quiet spot even with the river’s roar, were it not for the railway monsters that passed, pulling their chain of squealing and grinding slave-trucks.
When he went back inside, he could see through the open door that a little group had gathered on the terrace, and he was immediately the object of their scrutiny, the stranger in town, the greenest of horn. He went to ring the reception bell again but the absent host appeared from among the gathering, smiling, before he could do so, welcoming ‘the Scotchman’. Before the guest could ask, Vince said sorry the wifi wasn’t working, that they had no cell phone reception either, and when the Scotsman asked about dinner, Vince explained they ‘don’t do food any more – long story, wife went back to Ottawa.’ The only place to eat was Colette’s – over the river, next the store.
The Scotchman said he knew where Colette’s was from all the googling he’d done in Vancouver. Vince offered a beer, as if he owed one for not telling him sooner about the wifi or his wife. Vince was talkative. As he handed him a cold lager from the cabinet, he said it had seemed like such a good idea, opening a vegan restaurant up here to make use of all the local produce. They both wanted to get out of the city, and she’d always been interested in this part of the world, had written her thesis when she was in college about the native basketware of the region, but when she got here, it was like the reality didn’t live up to what she’d expected, she couldn’t actually settle.
‘Yes,’ the Scotchman said, ‘I can understand. It’s a long way out up here, from Vancouver.’
‘Ottawa, we came from,’ Vince corrected. They thought it would be good for their kids, but then there was the business, the way it tailed off. Especially after Colette opened her place across the river, nearer to the highway. ‘So anyway, just six weeks ago, she walked out, went back east. What’s a guy to do?’
The Scotchman headed out, digesting this impromptu confession, the fact that he had no connection to the outside world, back along the highway and its companion rail track to the old bridge. The roar was as it had been earlier, a micropolyphony of cluster notes comprised of river rapid splash and thunder. He thought of the old song, the title of Ken Kesey’s great novel about the dysfunctional logging family to the south of the US border, but he didn’t give in to the screaming urge to join the cacophony. Another sound emerged, and he saw a second railway line on the opposite bank to the CPR ran along the bank. He hadn’t seen it earlier, so intent had he been on the getting over the bridge itself, hauling luggage.
So he crossed again, as the line of rail trucks ran noisily underneath him. He was keen to see the little town properly, without the weight of his luggage, and he knew that Colette’s was the last remaining building from the days of the great orchards, when apples and pears and other fruit bearing the stamp of Spark’s Orchards, the Royal favourite, left Cloud Falls on the CPR for the world in great quantity. The BC archives had a photo from back in the 1880s when Jimmy Lyle’s uncle John MacLeod’s little empire was in its pomp, before he fell on hard times and Archie Clements came north with his wallet full of Vancouver dollars and bought everything up. There were no settler houses then, just two perfect avenues of acacias planted to stretch from his grand wooden ranch house and its great barn, over to his large emporium store. Like the inn, brave hopeful structures right on what was then the frontier of the settler world, now all gone except the apple store.
The Scotsman knew the birth of the Cloud Falls orchards was in essence MacLeod’s one brilliant idea – a system of artificial wooden channels to carry the fresh water that fell from the creek in the hidden valley above, into the plain of thirsty sedimentary soil that had accumulated over millennia at the fork of two great rivers to the north. How those flumes he had his workmen build, to carry water from the falls, had profited those who followed, the Spark family who took them over when the pioneer died, and ran a successful business right up until the Second World War. But now all that was left of that enterprise was this one little wooden building, by the end of the bridge, which was now open as a restaurant – Colette’s. He stood a while in front of it, and took a few photos. The front garden had some tables and chairs, and there was a newish porch over the door, but otherwise it seemed much as he imagined it had done, back in the day.
No one was around, though it was now supper time. The door was tricky to open, so a woman came from behind the counter inside to help, not Colette, he discovered, but Dorothy, who was welcoming, interested and talkative. He asked but she didn’t know anything of Jimmy Lyle. She’d only moved here a few years ago when she retired from teaching. Colette’s was very homely, plain aside from a little stage built into the far corner, where a mike-stand and a single amp were tucked away and a few posters illuminated the Cloud Falls music scene, regular shows hosted by Colette herself, who seemed proud to wear a fringed Stetson and to be able to introduce the country stars of the canyon. He imagined her entrance, in bouffant wig maybe, swishing the curtain back and stepping confidently through, to take the mike and give folks a song. Except there were no folks there that evening, only the Scotsman, waiting for the house special stew.
It was welcome home cooking, his first proper meal of the day, and he ate in silence, leafing through his Gold Country guide. Afterwards he thanked Dorothy as he paid, and left.
Outside, he went round the back of Colette’s to find the general store. It turned out it was just another door into the same building, though this side had an original apple-shaped advertisement from the days of the Sparks’ orchards, a great board with red paint peeling but still proud. Purveyors to the Throne, it said.
Again, it was Dorothy who greeted him. She apparently had just stepped through from the kitchen while he’d trekked around the outside. The stock was fairly minimal – a yellow-pack low cost range, tins and a few newspapers, drinks in a cooler. She asked if he was still hungry, as he went to pay for a few snacks and bottled water.
‘No,’ he answered, ‘like I said that stew was really good. But what I really was looking for was sun-cream. That sun is really hot. But you don’t seem to sell it?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘But yeah, it’s desert sun. You want to be careful walking around this time of year.’
Crossing the river again in the gloaming, he walked quickly over the bridge to the safety of the shore, and turned back towards the inn, his eye firmly on the white line down the middle. By the rail track, where the long train still hadn’t gone anywhere, a CPR pick-up truck was parked astride the rails, its tyres replaced by rail wheels.
The driver nodded as the Scotsman approached, wound down the window and smiled. ‘Just passing through?’ he asked.
‘Staying at the Inn,’ the wanderer answered. ‘Quite a train you have here.’ He nodded at the long line of trucks that stretched out of sight.
‘Yeah. She’s a mile long, this’un. I’m Ken,’ he said, offering a hand through the window. The Scotsman shook it, introduced himself.
‘So what brings you here, Bert? Fishing?’
So he explained the mission, that he was from Scotland, asked if he’d heard of Lyle, but CPR Ken shook his head slowly, gazing down the track ahead. ‘I heard it was a great place once upon a time, though, Cloud Falls,’ Ken said. ‘But there’s nothin much here now.’ He said his home was down the canyon in Boston Bar, and it was his job ‘to make sure one end of the train talks to the other.’
The inn was suddenly populous as the Scotsman opened the door. Noisy even. Groups of people, two and threes, sat on the terrace, drinking as the daylight faded, smoking and laughing. But there was no one at the desk. He rang. A woman dressed in t-shirt, pantaloons and sandals came bouncing in from the terrace.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘So you’re the Scotsman? Bert, right? Afraid Vince is not here right now.’
‘Ok. I just wanted to ask about breakfast.’
‘Yeah, sure – it’ll all be out here. The tree-planters usually come down around five thirty, so it may look like locusts passed through, but just ask for anything you need. Vince will be here in the morning. I’m Rosie, by the way.’ She gave him a quick smile and retreated to the terrace.
A tv chattered in the lounge, so he went through to see what was going on. In the half-light from the set, a man sat watching some nature show turned and nodded. The Scotsman saw at a glance that there was quite a library in one corner of the room, and went to look. It was mostly flotsam of the kind you might find in any place where holidaymakers leave a half-read novel they didn’t like enough to bring back home, or some hardly-used guide to the locality they no longer needed, but in the corner was another layer, older books, what the trade called ‘Canadiana’, among them many local publications even he’d never heard of. He ran his eyes quickly over the titles, making a mental note – Indian Myths and Legends from the North Pacific Coast of America, Our Tellings, Skookum Wawa, Travels in British Columbia and Alaska, by Newton Chittenden. Vince had said his wife had studied this area. Maybe these were hers?
‘You know anything about these books?’ he asked of the tv watcher.
‘Not much. But if you want to read anything, you just take it. Vince doesn’t mind.’
He took a few books upstairs, things that might be useful, and began flash-reading them in the way that years in the second-hand book trade had trained him to do. He noticed that Chittenden’s book was published in the same year the young James Lyle arrived here, 1884. It had no index so he flicked through it looking for some mention of Cloud Falls, then remembered at that time it was probably still called Sigurd’s Crossing. And so he found it, so comma heavy as to have cost the printer extra ink.
“Mr. John MacLeod, an old time resident, owns a fine property and ranch here, upon which, in addition to excellent grains, vegetables, apples, cherries, plums, and berries, he has grown, this season, grapes, which, he says, the Marquis of Lorne pronounced equal to any raised in the Dominion.”
Chittenden had also written a brief memorial to the first pioneer, the man whose enterprise preceded even MacLeod’s. At “Sigurd’s Crossing” it said, the population was “32 whites and 130 Indians, with 5 general stores, 3 hotels, one Indian Church of England and one school”, and principal industries were “fruit growing and farming. The road crosses the great mud slide, or moving mountain which a railroad engineer said was sliding toward the river at the rate of eight feet a year. How to build a railway over this changing base is a problem the engineers are trying to solve. I am well acquainted with Wayne Sigurd, who immortalized himself, and made a fortune here, in the days when the Cariboo was rolling out her fabulous wealth, by ferrying over the armies of gold hunters rushing northward. A man of remarkable energy and exceptional ability, he rode into this country poor, on a mule, and out of it in good style, a few years later, worth his thousands, added to them by successful operations in the West, invested all in California, flourished, became banker and Mayor of the most beautiful city on the Southern coast, and then, in the general financial crash of 1877, turned everything over to his creditors, like a man. The place is now quite a little village, and being situated at the entrance to the Nicola country, will always prosper...”
At the end of the verso page was an advert:
The Best Accommodations for Man and Beast.
JOHN MACLEOD’S
MACLEOD’S FALLS,
B. C.,
