macCLOUD FALLS, page 16
He lost no time in applying the Avon sun-cream once he was outside, so soft and soothing to his burning neck and arms and legs, then wandered over the school playing field towards what he now knew to be Widow Spark’s home. It was sadly dilapidated, as Sally had assured him it was. The white paint was peeling off everywhere, and the picket fence around the garden was broken down and missing in places. Weeds grew up through decking which looked rotten here and there. The shutters across the windows hung loosely skewwhiff, as if the hinges had given way. From the side gutter, a small tree had sprouted to quite some height. He didn’t dare go too close, as he felt sure Sally was watching and would certainly disapprove of any sacrilegious entry into the sacred sanctum of the widow’s ground.
Instead he simply stood for a while in the shade of a cottonwood tree, taking photos and thinking back over the little memoir he had ordered from the bookseller he knew in Victoria, how delighted he’d been to get the package and read the testimony the old fruit farmer had recorded in her twilight years. The book had been quite a success in the province, from what he could find out. It represented a glimpse of those years now lost in the early settlement of the interior, when the imperial connection to the old country was still very strong, and it was valuable record of the struggle of those pioneers to turn the natural wilderness to productivity. She described her life in Aberdeenshire, where she had worked in a school, the classmate who had fixed his mind on her when he was still a lad and came back home when he had established himself in British Columbia, with the determined aim of proposing, marrying her and taking her back out with him. He was an orchardist to trade, who had been one of the men contracted to erect the telegraph system to the coast, and when the gang brought wire to MacLeod Falls, he met Lyle’s uncle John, a fellow Aberdonian who had taken on the post of telegraph operator there. With MacLeod’s dream for his estate, the plans for orchards and so forth, it seemed like a fated encounter, so when the telegraph job was over, he headed back up the canyon to work for MacLeod, and set about the task of making the dream a reality. MacLeod had the vision to bring the water from the falls to irrigate what otherwise was an impossibly barren stretch of desert, but he was no orchardist. Without John Spark’s skill, the plan would never have worked so well. But work it did, and by the time Spark returned to Scotland to seek the hand of his sweetheart, MacLeod had expanded his premises and his ambition accordingly. He had persuaded a nephew of his to come out to join him, a young man who would inherit, as MacLeod himself had no heir. And all perhaps would have been well, had the lovely young Scottish bride not caught the eye of the proprietor, to the point where he would find excuses to send her husband off somewhere so he himself could seek her company. Scandalous, potentially, though Widow Spark in her memoirs made it perfectly plain that nothing unsavoury ever took place, despite his attempts. But maybe there was more to tell, rotting in the timbers of this old settler house in the desert of the canyon, secrets which the widow had kept but the post office lady knew and wanted to share with the right listener, a historian like herself.
Cool now, thanks to the shady embrace of the cottonwood tree, and soothed by the power of Avon, he took a swig of water and headed back into the sun. It was after 1pm and he thought it was time to cross the river again, to return to the inn, to write his journal and take a siesta in the faux-Mexican adobe of the oldest operating hotel in British Columbia.
He found a partly shaded path along the CNR line, and strolled along thinking back to the week he’d spent in Vancouver, and the woman he’d met. He couldn’t work her out – at times so open and friendly, so funny, so affectionate and even sexy that last night when they had smoked a tiny reefer she’d produced from her pocket as they walked through the balmy late night air after the hockey, when she came to his room and lay on his bed. But then when she picked him up the next morning to take him to the Greyhound, she’d been so distant, so formal, like a stranger again, as if he was a cold caller she hadn’t the time nor the desire for, as if the intimacy they’d shared had never happened. Everyone had moods, different sides to their personality, but in her case it was as if she became a different person, could switch from one to the other without the slightest prompt or warning. Not that it really mattered. He wasn’t in any kind of state to get involved with anyone, he knew exactly what he was, a cancer survivor whose remaining hair was falling out, and whatever attraction he might have held for women was long diminished. He’d accepted that, those long months living alone at his mother’s place after she died, observing his face in the mirror every day.
Yet she stayed in his mind, and wouldn’t depart. They had connected, they were cancer twins. Some people just couldn’t cope with proximity to the illness, as if it was contagious, as if they’d fall victim just by being in the same room, just as some others came forward with offers of assistance, people who’d never been that close, as if they’d been summoned by the need to minister to the sick. Who knew why, and what distinguished them? Some he had loved and valued had disappeared completely from his life. Some he didn’t really know before had become confidants, had shown him love, a side of themselves he hadn’t intuited.
But she, this woman he’d met, seemed to do both, according to some mysterious mood pattern. She was there, close, caring, then absent, lost in her own mind, whatever the reason.
In this great wilderness, where human beings held the barest hold on the little space they’d cleared for themselves, all that seemed fairly irrelevant. Here was the river, the bridge barrier easily surmounted, and certain death below. He stepped onto the planks and stared down at the violence of water current. No long drawn out psychodrama of hope frustrated, no desperate need to prove anything, no one to please, not even oneself – and no more mother. Just the inevitability of a swift release. It would be easy. He only had to lift himself up onto the iron rail and then lean forward. In a matter of seconds, the impact would kill him. In no time his earthly remains would be miles downstream. If he was found at all, he’d be unrecognisable. Just a battered, bloated body. Perhaps headless, like those miners found long ago.
And was that why he’d come here, at a deep level, subconsciously, because of a death wish like she had suggested? Not really to try to write the book he’d always dreamt of writing, but just to find a good place to die. His own Sick Heart River. Maybe. He placed both hands on the iron balustrade and eased himself up until his feet were off the concrete and his weight was evenly distributed above and below, the tipping point. It would be easy. And for an instant he was almost falling, before something, some instinct seemed to halt him, like a force grabbing his ankles and pulling him back. He fell to the wooden floor of the bridge, sweating from the heat of the sun, and felt some internal source burn him, from the core of his being outward.
In his mind he had been ready, had been so since he came to terms with the diagnosis, but his body refused to fall. For some reason it wanted to live a while longer, despite the prognosis, despite the depression that had clouded everything. There was a curiosity. So he got to his feet, and walked on to the end of the bridge, the urge gone. His feet seemed to have decided, his legs too. Maybe it was as simple as that – what the body wants, it has to get. The body wants to cross, not jump. The mind follows, eyes perhaps glancing at the great river below wistfully, but the great notion fades, step upon step.
He made his way across safely, walked along the rail track, head suddenly void of thought. Back at the inn, there was no sign of Vince and still no wi-fi. He helped himself to one of the raisin bran muffins and put a loon in the honesty box. Then he heard the sound of a woman’s voice and a dog bark echoing from upstairs, and went to investigate. Piles of laundry lay outside bedroom doors and from one a voice sang some song he didn’t know. He knocked on the open door, a little Yorkshire terrier came dashing towards him barking, and the young woman he’d met the day before looked up suddenly from her task of changing sheets, dyed pink hair straggling round her face.
The terrier growled at him. ‘Don’t mind her, she’s just frightened,’ she said. ‘Are you looking for something?’
‘I was looking for Vince. He said he was going to fix the wi-fi this morning, but it’s still not working.’
‘There’s never been wi-fi here,’ she laughed.
‘Never?’
‘No. Not in all the time I’ve been working here anyway.’ She looked him over. ‘You a writer or something?’
He nodded. ‘That’s pretty cool,’ she said. ‘I write poetry myself. Not that I’ve ever had anything printed but you know, it’s good to do it. Helps me make sense of how I’m feeling and stuff.’ She finished tucking in the sheets and scooped dog up into her arms. Its little doggy face poked out, no longer growling, but secure. ‘So, you been out exploring the metropolis this morning?’
‘A bit,’ he said. ‘I walked down to the junction with Highway 8, and then back along the highway on the other side of the river.’
‘Not so much to see, I guess?’
He smiled, recollecting the people he’d met. ‘Oh I don’t know. I ran into a biker gang over at the Valhalla. That was quite exciting.’
‘Oh yeah, I saw them too when I came over to work. But those guys, they’re not real bikers. Just weekenders, you know, vacationers, suits up from Vancouver or Seattle, doing the canyon in their expensive leathers. They pass through here all the time, sometimes stay here at the inn. Now I could tell you all about real bikers. When I was younger, like sixteen, my guy – my ex, actually – me and him rode all over Canada, out east, up the Trans Alaskan, and down to the states. Route 66. Those were real road trips, I can tell you. Some of the scrapes we got into, wow-we. Kinda fun though. But he turned out bad, and so I ended up here in little old Cloud Falls living with my mom. And Tyler here. Isn’t that right, my little precious?’ She lifted the Yorkie up level with her face and planted a kiss on its hairy mouth. Little ribbons twisted into her hair gave the dog a doll-like look. It was hard to square this baby sweetness with a biker girl past.
‘So, anyway, no wi-fi?’ he said. ‘And no mobile signal?’
‘Mobile signal?’
‘Sorry, I mean cell phone.’
‘Ah, no. Fraid we’re a bit cut-off up here. Landlines only. You get used to it, I guess, though sometimes I just take such a hankering to be off on a bike again. Specially this time of year.’
He left Tyler and Rosie to wrestle with more bedsheets and duvet covers, and went downstairs into the lobby. Out on the terrace, the evidence of smokers and coffee-drinkers sat on the tables. The stink from the ashtrays made him glad he’d stopped, but all the same he felt a wave of regret when he thought about all the mornings he himself had spent with coffee, cigarettes and a good book, and a sudden rush of desire for a smoke gripped him. It was a feeling he got from time to time, like a vacuum would suddenly appear in his lungs, the memory of something that should be there but wasn’t any longer. Like a lost lover, whose toxic presence was once everywhere, whose absence felt both sad and welcome.
He lay on the bed and prepared to write his journal. Down below the inn, he saw the river constant as ever, and the ospreys nesting on the pylon platform. Only the giant chick was there, stepping from taloned foot to taloned foot, as if waiting impatiently for something. The village on the far side seemed more familiar now. He had learned a bit, knew there was a single tipi in the back garden of Lyle’s house where a kind of alternative group gathered, that little old Sally kept the post office, the community spirit and the gossip running in the shut-down school, and that gangs of weekend bikers called into Valhalla for beer and pizza in the shrine to Harley Davidson, run by the great-grand-daughter of Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser. And he had learned that old Widow Spark’s house, which must be the oldest surviving dwelling since John MacLeod’s original one was gone, was slowly returning to wilderness. He had walked the perimeter, seen the falls where the magical transformative water came from, the Indian church, the reservation, the highway that now bypassed the settlement.
After he’d written his journal, he decided to go to Valhalla for the big match as Marie had suggested. Up here in the canyon, though it was a five-hour drive from the city, the hockey fever seemed just as strong. While he made ready, the huge rocky crag on the opposite side turned the most brilliant roseate shade, and then a slow tide-line of dusk rose up from the river in the valley floor until it covered the whole of the canyon.
It was just after seven in the evening and the sun had long dropped behind the canyon wall by the time he set out from the inn, this time wearing long trousers and jacket, clothes a little less conspicuous. It was quite cold now, and the canyon wind blew as ever. Yet if he looked up, the sky still glistened with an opalescent amber light above the steep crags. Crossing the bridge came easier – no urge to leap. Curiosity had won this battle, and he stood a while mid-course trying to pick out planets. But the ecliptic was hidden, the canyon bowl just too high.
He walked along Acacia Avenue and up the slope to Valhalla. The gleaming polished motorbikes that had filled the car park earlier were all gone, and a few dusty battered pick-ups and cars had taken their place. The promised locals, presumably. Inside the timber cavern, only four or five tables were occupied so far – a couple of groups of varying ages, that could have been families, and some of the tree-planters. The big screen was showing the pre-game. The expectant crowd, however few in number, was just as intense and anxious as the crowd he’d been a part of that night in Vancouver for the previous match.
Marie looked pleased when she noticed he’d taken up her invitation, and poured him a beer without his asking, though she didn’t stop to talk. He settled down at a table on his own, just behind the group of tree-planters from the inn, who acknowledged him briefly with glances or nods. The tension really was, as the talking head on-screen said, palpable.
Marie brought him the beer and a homemade pizza bedecked with pepperoni and vegetables, and set them both on table with a flashing smile. Then she straightened up, put her hands on her hips she shouted ‘Go Canucks Go!’, not at him or indeed anyone, just an involuntary release of energy. The little crowd of cheerleaders yelled in response, not quite in unison, as if badly rehearsed. ‘Go Canucks!’
As the pundits went through the pre-game, discussing the various players and their talents or failings, he was watching the crowd more than the screen, intrigued by these local faces. Perhaps that one family of different generations all wearing Canucks caps were First Nations, members of the N’laka’pamux band, even relatives of Lyle’s wife? Their features were not unlike hers. There was a patriarch, a man of maybe sixty or seventy, of wide girth, at the heart of the group. Besides him a much smaller woman of his age. Then, around their table and another beside that, a group of three younger men and two women of their age with children on their knees. On the floor at the feet of the grandmother, two small boys of six or seven were playing some computer game on a hand-held screen, and glancing up every so often to see if the match had begun. Whatever it was they were playing was every bit as intense as any hockey game could be, their little faces contorting with alternating expressions of pleasure or annoyance.
Some of the tree-planters were there too, this tribe too taking on a peculiar and unexpected mystique, from the remains of their crack-of-dawn breakfast he discovered scattered around the dining room in the mornings and the exhausted expressions they wore as they dragged their tiredness around, like weaklings or invalids moving through the shadows of the inn for a brief hour in the evenings, before presumably they disappeared upstairs to sleep the sleep of the righteous in preparation for yet another crack-of-dawn start. Most of them seemed quite fit and young, but it was clear that work was heavy even for them, though a couple of the older ones wore that seasoned look of experience and seemed to have perfected the art of the tree-planters’ day, whatever that entailed. These older men looked like grizzled 60s survivors, back-to-the-earthers of the kind he remembered. At the table in front of him was the one young lad he’d spoken with briefly when he found the library back at the inn. Close up, he had an intense look that reminded of DH Lawrence, face angular, expression slightly forbidding. With him, a jolly slightly boyish girl he’d also glimpsed around the inn, and an older woman who seemed to be enjoying her food more than the hockey.
He decided to strike up conversation and leant forward just enough to let them know he wanted to be friendly.
‘So this is going to be quite a match, then?’ he said.
DH Lawrence didn’t turn around as he replied, his eyes fixed on the screen. ‘Sure hope so. 3-0 and we could all breathe a bit more easy.’
‘I hope Timmy Thomas gets chased off the ice,’ the girl said. The woman busy eating pizza looked up for a moment and grunted her agreement. That was the goaltender for Boston. He’d learned that much in Vancouver, that Thomas was Boston’s top-performer and had almost kept the Canucks out in the first games.
The camera went to the Sedin brothers, the Swedish twins whose combination play had been so much a part of Vancouver’s successful season so far. One of the other tree-planters shouted out ‘Go on Hank! Go on Dan!’
DH Lawrence glanced briefly behind him at the interloper. ‘So you like hockey?’
‘I’m intrigued. It seems everybody I’ve met since I got to British Columbia is focused on this.’
‘Yup, pretty much. Never won it before. We nearly did in 1994, went all the way down to last game. Real heartbreaker.’
‘I was eight, watched it with my dad,’ the jolly girl said.
‘Vancouver will never win the Stanley Cup,’ said the disinterested eater, lifting another slice of pizza. ‘Never have, never will.’
‘Now that’s where you’re wrong. Vancouver has won the Stanley Cup,’ one of the older guys at the next table said.
‘Not the Canucks, though,’ said DH Lawrence.
‘No, but it was a Vancouver team. Back in 1915,’ he went on, addressing the outsider and the disbelieving, ‘there was a team went by the name of the Vancouver Millionaires, only been going for two or three years, and they won the cup. Swept the series against the Ottawa Senators 3-0.’
