macCLOUD FALLS, page 17
‘He’s right,’ another voice confirmed. ‘The Millionaires won it.’
‘Yeah, but that was like a hundred years ago. I mean now,’ the pizza eater grunted, her mouth full.
The outsider found his imagination captured by the sound of that team, the Millionaires. It made him think, as mention of that word always seemed to do, of his mother’s favourite cake, so called millionaires’ shortbread. It was one of those memory reflexes he welcomed, as it brought a warm fuzzy feeling of days now indistinct in the kitchen of childhood. The Vancouver Millionaires – a loud and proud name for a new team, representing a new city, a new province even. And of course that was back in Lyle’s era, when he was still well, still working. It was a strange tangential connection that seemed to reach back through the decades and join this moment to that.
As puck-down approached, a few more people came in and settled in front of the screen. Marie and her man filled beer glasses and the cabin got ready to roar. The opening action was tense and both sides were giving it their full physical presence. Lawrence explained what was at stake in this third game was control of the series. A 3-0 Canucks lead would make Boston’s task almost impossible, while a win for the American team would give them momentum. About five minutes in, the scores still level but Vancouver pressing hard, one of their players hit a Boston guy really hard and he fell to the ice, pole-axed. The cabin erupted as Rome, the offending Canuck, was given a major penalty, and left his side a man down for 15 minutes. Boston pressed hard to take advantage and a hush of anticipated disappointment fell over the cabin. As each attack was repelled, with the Canuck goaltender standing firm, a cheer of relief arose. At the end of the first period, the score was still tied at 0-0. It was a tense match, ill-tempered and brutal, and the mood spread to the small crowd sitting in the isolation of the canyon pub. The false Lawrence’s staring eyes burned with passion worthy of his doppelgänger as he complained about the penalty. Hockey was getting too soft, he seemed to be saying. Hits were a part of the game. People got hurt. That was how it was.
In the second period, it all went bad for the Canucks. Eleven seconds in, Boston scored, and fifteen minutes later they were 4-0 ahead. The Canucks goaltender, who everyone referred to as Lou, looked shaken. The match was surely beyond them. The outsider could feel the anger and disappointment of the fans around him. He tried to care, and did with the mild enthusiasm of someone who didn’t really know what was going on or why it mattered so much, and he sensed that his confused presence was becoming unwelcome.
At the end of the second period, all the tree-planters but false Lawrence got up and left the cabin, complaining that they had to get up a 4am. Maybe he should have left with them, but there was a spectacle unfolding here in front of him – somehow involving him – that felt compulsive. He felt sure that Martina would be watching it too, back in Vancouver, and he’d liked the feeling that they were sharing something, despite the distance between them.
False Lawrence sat glaring at the screen, listening to the pundits discuss Vancouver’s collapse, and the penalty incurred which seemed to have proved so decisive in the match. The outsider’s slightly vacant confused expression seemed to annoy him, as did the fact that the group of First Nations at the next table seemed to be carrying on with their chatter and laughter, despite the tragedy unfolding in the match. He kept glancing over at them as if he really wanted to say something, to tell them to shut up or get out.
Marie brought them both another beer. ‘Cheer up,’ she said. ‘It’s not over yet’. False Lawrence scowled at her. She seemed not too unhappy at the score – presumably she’d profited regardless, and was reckoning up the tabs mentally as the game wore on. No one in the cabin cared enough or was angry enough for the solitary tree-planter remaining, and when the third period began it was just one foul after another, the players battling as if the incident in the first period had been the first act in a war. Boston scored again before Vancouver managed one, but then it was disaster after disaster for the Canucks. In the last ten minutes, the Bruins scored another four goals to end the match 8-1 up.
The outsider didn’t know if that was as extreme an outcome as it would have been if the same score had occurred in a football match at home, but the face of the guy in front of him said it all. Finally, as the pundits gave the statistics on how long it was since a team had won by that margin in the play-offs, and how all the penalty minutes compared with other years, false Lawrence slapped a banknote on the table and got drunkenly to his feet, glaring at everyone in his way as he stomped towards the door. The expression on his face said he was looking for a fight, but was unlikely to find it here in the canyon tonight. Marie came over to clear his table and smiled at the stranger.
‘Some people just can’t take a loss,’ she said. ‘So you wanna come talk to some of the people over here? They might know about that guy you’re interested in. George’s folks have lived here forever.’
He followed her over to the table where the family group sat talking. They didn’t seem too despondent at the outcome of the match, they were laughing and joking about something.
‘George,’ said Marie, attracting attention of the patriarch, ‘This is the fella I told you about earlier. He’s here from over in Scotland. He’s looking to find out about a man who used to live here about a hundred years ago, a relative of yours, is that it?’
The stranger from Scotland nodded, said yes, he had been a relative most probably, judging by what he knew, but he was still trying to work out exactly how.
George, a big man with a black ponytail pulled back from a balding brow, leaned back and smiled, revealing a chequered line of teeth, gaps where some were missing, and gold in other places. ‘So he lived here in Cloud Falls?’ he asked in a deep voice.
‘Yes, from about 1884 until sometime around 1915, I think. He was about eighteen when he arrived here. His uncle had an estate and a store. John MacLeod.’
‘Ah, you mean Jimmy Lyle, don’t you?’
The response was so ready, and so definite after having met with such vagueness so far when his quarry was mentioned, that the Scotsman laughed.
‘Yes I do. James Lyle.’
‘Well now, Jimmy Lyle was a great man, I believe. A great friend to our people, and to all the native people of British Columbia.’
‘So he’s still remembered?’
‘Remembered and honoured. Just last summer, the band erected a memorial to his memory.’
‘Really? Mind if I sit down?’ the Scotsman said. They pulled up a chair and he joined the company. Marie had gone back to the bar. She glanced over as she washed through a few glasses, watching and maybe eavesdropping too.
‘Yes. It was 100 years, you see, since the time when all the chiefs of British Columbia gathered here to sign a paper that was presented to the Prime Minister at Kamloops. They came here because of Jimmy Lyle, because he could speak their language well and they wanted him to write down their words in English. He was a very clever man, could speak a lot of different native languages. So last year, when it was one hundred years since that, the chiefs gathered here again and we had a ceremony at the new gathering place up past the reservation. You seen that?’
‘No,’ Bert said. ‘I didn’t know about that.’
‘So what brings you here? You seeking after your ancestors?’ the woman sitting to George’s right said.
‘This is my wife, Amber,’ George offered. ‘I didn’t get your name.’
‘Bert. Bert Johnson.’ He shook them both by the hand. ‘I suppose I am in a way, seeking my ancestors. Most times it seems like it’s the other way round, people turn up in Scotland from Canada, looking for their people.’
George nodded. ‘Well, Bert, if you’re interested I think you should really talk with one of the elders. I don’t know all that much about Jimmy Lyle, you see, but there’s some do.’
‘How long are you here?’ Amber asked. She seemed a little suspicious to the Scotsman, not as open as George seemed to be.
‘I’ll be here a while. I’m staying over at the inn on the other side of the river.’
‘And you come all the way here from Scotland? To find out about Jimmy Lyle?’
‘Yes.’
‘He must be pretty important over there.’
‘No, not really. Not as important as he should be.’
‘So you are going to make him famous or something? Marie said you were writing a book.’
‘Well, we’ll see. At the moment I’m just finding out as much as can, you know. And I wanted to come here and see for myself what this place was like, not just read about it in books.’
‘And what do you think so far?’ Amber asked.
‘I think it’s about as far away and as different as anywhere could be from where Jimmy Lyle grew up.’
‘Where was that?’ George asked.
‘He came from a little island way out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. No trees, high winds and pretty cold.’
‘Ha, yes, I guess it is pretty different then. And you from there too?’
‘No,’ said the Scotsman. ‘No, I live in a city. Edinburgh.’
By the time the stranger got out of Valhalla that night, they’d drunk a few beers together and had struck up a friendship. The hockey game seemed far distant, almost a memory of another day altogether. George had promised he’d take Bert to the new memorial just as soon as he could arrange it, and Amber who had finally come round to trusting him had invited him to supper that Friday. The Scotsman said goodnight to Marie as he left. They had a meeting scheduled for the next morning at 11, when the pub would be quiet and they could talk. She seemed slightly cooler towards him, he thought, as he wandered towards the bridge.
The moon had risen above the canyon walls and the strip of land with the little village glowed eerily. Gloomily, even. Across the CNR track, the river shimmered silver as it rippled southwards, incessant and unfaltering. He wheeled onto the bridge and began the crossing. There in the distance, leaning over the balustrade, was a figure, smoking. The faint scent of marijuana, then not so faint, but pungent. It was the false Lawrence, who had stormed out of the pub earlier after the Canucks’ collapse. Had he been waiting?
The echo of his footsteps sounded loud in hollow moonlight and the smoking loiterer turned to watch him approach. Closer the Scotsman got, one heel toe after another, as on he went.
‘Hey…’ The greeting wasn’t threatening, just a Canadian drawl that sounded stoned or drunk or both. ‘I was waiting for you.’
‘Waiting for me?’
‘Sure. Just watching the river and smoking up.’ The Scotsman was only a few steps away. ‘They’re taking all the man outta the game, buddy,’ the loiterer drawled. ‘A hit like Rome got binned for, that’s a part of the game, always has been.’ He shook his head, drew on whatever it was he was smoking so the tip lit like a firefly. ‘That was just wrong. Sometimes guys hit each other. It’s what they do.’ He shook his head sadly, as if he had lost some close relative and couldn’t quite fathom the harshness of fate.
‘I suppose so.’
‘You suppose? You suppose so? I’m telling you, man, it’s a part of the fucking game. People get hit, people get hurt. That was just wrong, that penalty.’
The Scotsman stopped a few feet away from the tree-planter. He was shaking his head, gazing down at the river. Then he straightened up and held out the burning smoke. ‘Want some?’
It was a reflex to reach out and take it. For so many years he’d thought nothing of sticking a burning cigarette or a pipe or even a joint in his mouth, but since the cancer it seemed as if it was a little bit of hell, tempting and damning. Would it be construed as an act of ill-will if he refused? So he took it, the reeking joint, no more than an inch long and put it to his lips. Pure grass. The wisp of the aroma rose into his nostrils, the in-draw caught his throat and he coughed. That was enough to break the loiterer’s mood, and he laughed.
‘Not used to it, are you?’
‘Not really.’
‘You don’t need much then. That’s pure BC bud. It’ll knock you out.’
And suddenly the threat was gone and his new companion put his arm around his shoulders. ‘Come on, my little Scotch buddy. Let’s head back to base camp.’ He gave the joint back and they carried on over the bridge, beyond the point where jumping would be easiest, and along the bank on the far side, past the long line of CPR trucks waiting for the signal to take off to wherever in this vast country they were bound.
‘So what is it you do, this tree-planting?’
‘Plant trees, man. What else? We go in where the loggers have been clear cutting and we plant as quick as we can. The more we plant the more we get paid.’
‘All day every day?’ His new buddy nodded. The Scotsman felt a rushing in his mind, a euphoria he vaguely recognised but hadn’t experienced for a long time, as the effects of the smoke seemed to bend his thoughts into new and unexpected shapes. It was a long time since he’d been stoned, and never had such a little quantity hit him with such force. Hit, he thought. Hits are part of the game.
‘I’m just earning some money here. I’m a student at UBC in Vancouver. It’s tough work if you’re not used to it, but I been doing it for a while now. Some guys work at it all year round.’
‘But there’s no trees round here. I mean, it’s desert.’
‘No, not round here. We’re working about 100km north of here. We just use the inn for a base cause it’s cheap but better than camping out. You wanna see some of the places people work. Just a bit of old tarp in the middle of a swarm of black flies. This is luxury by comparison.’
They reached the inn where the little neon sign still burned. But the lights were all out in the rooms upstairs.
‘Shit,’ the false Lawrence said. ‘It’s late. I’m wiped. Fucking hockey.’
‘You’ve got an early start?’
‘Up at 4. In the truck by 4.30. Breakfast as we go. On the hill by 5.30.’
He pushed open the front door and the Scotsman followed. He let out a big sigh and turned to climb the stairs. ‘Name’s Doug,’ he added, holding out a hand.
‘Good to meet you, Doug. I’m Bert. Must be hard work.’
‘Sure is.’
As they parted, Bert smiled. ‘By the way, did anybody ever tell you look a lot like the young DH Lawrence?’
‘DH Lawrence? Who he?’
‘A writer – an Englishman.’
‘No, can’t say anybody ever told me that. Was he any good?’
‘Yes, he was good. So it’s a compliment.’
‘Okay!’
The Scotsman watched him wearily take the steps upwards, and went into the lounge. A single standard lamp was lit and he sat down under its arc. The room seemed to morph and sway, tending to lurch away to his right, but the books on the shelves were old friends and they stayed put. He fixed his attention on them. The titles on the spines were like an anchor to a familiar world, even though many were unfamiliar volumes, Canadian writers he’d never heard of. And then he saw a DH Lawrence – a little Penguin Travel Library edition of ‘Mornings in Mexico’. He pulled it off the shelf and leaved through it. He’d read it long ago as a youth, when he’d had a few months of Lawrence passion. A passage caught his eye:
Now the white man is a sort of extraordinary white monkey that, by cunning, has learnt lots of semi-magical secrets of the universe, and made himself boss of the show. Imagine a race of big white monkeys got up in fantastic clothes, and able to kill a man by hissing at him; able to leap through the air in great hops, covering a mile in each leap; able to transmit his thoughts by a moment’s effort of concentration to some great white monkey or monkeyess, a thousand miles away: and you have, from our point of view, something of the picture that the Indian has of us.
He sat with Lawrence for a while, not so much reading but thinking. He’d read it before, yes, long before, yet somehow it was still with him, the mood if not the exact words. That yearning for somewhere beyond he’d ignored for so many years while his Edinburgh life piled up volumes he bought and sold, a mountain now of printed paper which he’d tried to scale but never quite did as it grew faster than he could climb. An unreached peak, much discussed during a life spent in pubs, punctuated by conversations with men and women who shared his passion for the written word, who’d fallen like him for the illusion that this eternal literature, this deathless prose, was what life was really about. His mind had travelled the world, had settled briefly in one place or another, following in the tracks of different writers whose imaginations had grasped his attention for a while like DH Lawrence, were captured and bound by the printer’s art, but he hadn’t gone anywhere. Not Ranamin, not Mexico, nowhere.
Only a day and a half had passed, only a matter of a hours since he stepped off the Greyhound, yet already this strange place, deep in the heart of British Columbia, hidden away in the canyon, no more than a scattering of houses between the highway, the railway, the river and the other railway, already it was opening up to him and showing him that the history he had studied, the books he had consumed, the lives he had sought out, all was still here – buried and decaying maybe, but still it was here, all its atoms, the rocks and water, the timber houses and the iron bridge, where trucks and bikes and hockey games were mere transients, travellers passing through the timeless, electrons spinning. The dead were still alive, the memories still active, the quantum heart still spinning, however elusive and hard to find in the quotidian.
God, he was stoned.
To gather his thoughts, he focused on his quarry, Jimmy Lyle, embracing the culture of the local people, the way of life, their stories and their deep beliefs, of how he’d sought out the culture he knew was dying and tried to give it a shape, a form in a different way, that would at least acknowledge its existence, and that it had once been the way of life here, the only one.
Was that all a falsification, a translation into English of a Macphersonian type, that palatisation of the dying Gaelic culture of the highlands of Scotland for the drawing rooms of Edinburgh and London, of Paris and Vienna, a romantic myth of primitive savagery which troubled young yellow waist-coated Werthers in faraway cities could swoon over, before they borrowed the pistols of a rival and blew their sorry little brains out? And he thought of Franz Boas, collecting up the sacred artefacts, even the skulls of the tribal ancestors, to be shipped off to whatever museum or university was paying his expenses, wasn’t he just another Burke and Hare clone, profiting from the trade in the name of science? Those white monkeys with their trickery and technology had had their way with the others, sent them off to be educated and Christianised, to rob them of what they decreed brute natures, dressed them in the mode of the time, filled their heads with another set of stories they couldn’t understand because they were foreign, never to be naturalised. Those white monkeys, of which the Scotsman realised he himself was one, had brought their settled ways, had built their permanent houses, had converted untilled soil to prodigious productivity, but even that was gone now.
