macCLOUD FALLS, page 19
When Vince reappeared from the kitchen, where the sound of the dishwasher resonated, the Scotsman thanked him again, then asked whether he’d made any progress with restoring the router. Vince winced a little. ‘Ah, no. I’m sorry about that. I was going to ask the man over in the village who deals with the local connection to take a look at it today, see if he can get it working.’
Just then Rosie and her little Yorkie came in, and Vince, glad of the distraction, got up and left.
‘Hey there,’ the former biker girl said, on seeing the stranger again. ‘You good?’
‘I’m good,’ he said, adopting the phrase.
‘How are your investigations going?’
‘Good too. I’m going round to interview the woman in Valhalla in a bit.’
‘Marie? Don’t think she’ll know much. She’s only been here a couple of years.’
‘Eight, she said.’
‘Eight? No, don’t think so. They sorta keep themselves to themselves over there. Got their own customers, you know. Trans-Canada Highway drivers like those weekend bikers you said you saw.’
‘Anyway, she asked me to call in. Her grandfather was from Scotland.’
‘Well good luck with that,’ she said, and she and her dog companion headed off upstairs.
He sat reading the two magazines Vince had fished out of the garbage. They really were treasure, full of the kind of detail he could never have found at home in Scotland, the kind of culture that went under the radar, printed locally and disposed of as readily as any newspaper might be, when the reading is over and the time for clear out comes. It was a little miracle that his disorganised and eccentric host should have found them and brought them to him. And there must be a third, at least one more, number 1 in the series.
It was a kind of book hunt, the sort of quest he’d been doing since he was an undergraduate about to drop out in favour of the easy money he could earn. But here he was far from the familiar world of Edinburgh’s narrow streets where print culture was ancient, woven in, like mortar between the stonework, or seemed to force itself like dandelions from between every paving stone. Out here there was little he knew, and little he could do to find the tracks. But perhaps in Merritt, where the magazines had been printed, perhaps at the museum he’d find out more. He rose from the table and went to his room, added the magazines to the material he was gathering, and wrote for a while, the story of the night before.
An hour passed, and when he checked his watch again, it was time to head towards Valhalla. He wasn’t sure what to wear, it was so hot, and yet his skin was still sore from the day before. Loose shirt and trousers seemed wise.
Crossing the bridge once more, he hesitated at the place where he had leant over the balustrade the day before. The urge was gone, he really didn’t feel like jumping now. Instead he carried straight on to the other side, past The Apple Store, along Acacia Avenue, up the hill into the empty car park.
The bar was empty. He stood for moment, looking at the odd marks on the wooden floor. Marie must have heard the door, because she appeared from the back, wiping her hands on a towel. ‘Ah, the Scotsman! You made it,’ she said. ‘Looking at the signatures?’
‘Signatures?’
‘On the floor. Every year after the burn-up, winner gets to sign the floor inside here.’
Then it clicked. ‘You mean these are tyre marks?’
‘Sure! Winner gets to bring their bike in here and sign the floor.’
He laughed. ‘Must reek the place out, surely?’
‘Yep. Takes about half an hour to clear, before anybody can come back in,’ she said.
He pictured the scene, the bike-beast revving and roaring, the front brakes holding it, the back tyre spinning and melting till it was soft enough to leave the skid mark. The grinning faces of the bikers waiting outside to see how skilfully the rider could make his mark. Not really signatures as such, just crazy black rubber squiggles.
‘So you want a coffee or something?’
‘Ok. Thanks, yes.’
‘I saw you talking to George last night,’ she added, as they crossed to the bar. ‘He able to tell you anything about your guy?’
‘A bit,’ he answered. ‘Said there was some sort of new memorial to him here they’d erected last year.’
‘Here?’
‘Somewhere round here. You haven’t heard of it?’
‘No,’ she said slowly, holding her hands up, palms out. ‘But then I don’t hear much of what goes on with them.’
The word ‘them’ hovered in the air, unresolved. He sat on a stool as she disappeared around the back again, presumably to fetch coffee. His eyes came to rest on a small sign pinned to the wall next to the till. WALL OF SHAME, it said. He read the names casually, not really paying attention, until he spotted one that was familiar. It was the chief’s, the band leader. The man he was hoping to meet, whose calls and emails may be waiting somewhere in the ether he couldn’t access.
When she came back bearing two cups, she sat down next him on the customers’ side of the wooden bar. ‘So, good old Scotland,’ she said, with a smile. Close up, her noticed her frown lines. ‘You know, I’ve been over there a few times, when I was younger. We went all over – Glasgow, where my cousins are. Edinburgh. Stirling too.’
He hesitated, didn’t say that wasn’t really ‘all over’.
‘My mom was very proud of being Scottish. She had this whole language she used to speak to us when we were kids if we were naughty. I still remember it, even though she passed on ten years ago. She used to call me a wee bissim. Or a blether when I talked too much. I miss her voice sometimes. Though I guess if it hadn’t been for her passing, I wouldn’t have been able to buy this place.’
‘It’s quite a place,’ he observed, looking around at all the biker memorabilia.
‘Ain’t it just? You know it’s the biggest log cabin in BC? We’ve had over 500 bikers stop here on the annual Hot Poker run up to Kamloops.’ A broad pride showed on her face as she leant back on her barstool, and took a sip of coffee. ‘Quite something, eh?’
‘It is,’ he agreed. But his curiosity was headed in another direction. He took a mouthful from his cup. ‘I wanted to ask you about that notice,’ he said, pointing at the sign that had caught his eye, the wall of shame.
‘That?’ she said, frowning. ‘That’s the people who aren’t welcome here. Why do you ask?’
‘I couldn’t help noticing that one of the names is the same as the head of the local band?’
‘It is,’ she said, slightly puzzled. ‘It’s him. He’s one of the four bad chiefs in BC.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘He’s holding the town to ransom over water is why.’
‘Water?’
‘Sure - says that the town’s water supply comes from Indian land.’
‘It comes from the falls, doesn’t it?’
‘Yup. Over on the far side of town.’
‘MacLeod Falls?’
She looked at him oddly. ‘You mean Cloud Falls, don’t you? You seen them?’
‘I walked up there yesterday. But they used to be called MacLeod Falls. The man who gave his name to them was Jimmy Lyle’s uncle.’
‘The guy you’re writing about?’
‘The very same. A Scotsman.’
She took another sip from her coffee and stared at him for a while. He could see her mind doing some kind of assessment on whether he was telling the truth. Then she said, ‘No I didn’t know that. So he named the falls after himself?’
‘It seems so. He bought a big estate here, back around 1870. It was him who planted the acacia trees along the road here. He was the one who began the orchards.’
For a moment, she seemed unsure whether to believe him, as if wondering who this stranger was, wandering into her domain, telling her things about it she didn’t know. Then she shook her head. ‘No, that was old Mrs Spark, I’m sure it was.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, she and her husband did run the orchards, for many years, but they worked for MacLeod at first. It was MacLeod who brought the Sparks out here from Scotland. And it was him who first brought the water from the falls. He had a whole complicated system of irrigation built that ran all the way down here to his fields.’
She registered surprise, and so he told her in outline what he knew, of the early settlement in the place she now lived, of Lyle and the Indian Rights movement, his uncle and his schemes. When he was done, she drained her coffee cup and frowned at him, then gave a snort and laughed.
‘Well, you have been doing your research. Guess old Macleod didn’t have anybody telling him he couldn’t help himself to the water back then. Or that he couldn’t call it his if he wanted to.’
The phone rang and his host got off her stool to answer it. He thought then about the thesis he’d read in the UBC archive, written by one of the local band who was now a lawyer in Vancouver, which had focused on the water rights issue. He remembered the opening chapter and the story she told there, of being out with her father in their truck one day, heading up the slope away from the reservation, and coming to a locked gate across a path that was traditional – how her father had backed up, and then charged the gate, which had crumpled in front of the cowcatcher. It seemed these old tensions ran as deep now as ever they’d done. He’d come here on the trail of a story he’d thought was history, yet it was clear now that nothing was resolved and that the struggle Lyle had engaged in was still ongoing.
He wondered if he should press the point and try to find out more about Marie’s feelings, but decided against it. He had to remain open, impartial, and not make assumptions. The case of the rights of the N’laka’pamux was clearly not resolved even after a hundred years. He wondered, would Lyle have stood with his friends the Indians against his fellow white settlers, even his fellow Scots like Widow Spark? Or had there been a limit to his sympathy? From what he knew of him, he would have sought some equitable solution, something to benefit all, if that was possible when a resource like water was so necessary to all. But wasn’t it a paradox that people should be squabbling over water from a little waterfall when a great river roared past, only a matter of a few yards away?
‘You know, I’m supposed to meet this chief here,’ he volunteered, when she hung up the phone.
‘Here?’ she queried. ‘Surely not here?’
‘No, not in here exactly. Just sometime while I’m staying. But I can’t pick up internet or phone messages.’
‘Ah okay.’ She shrugged. ‘Word’ll get around. Just you rely on the bush telegraph. If he wants to see you, he’ll find you.’ She probably didn’t intend to sound racist, but her attitude smacked of a deep distrust. Then, as if she could read what he was thinking, she added, ‘I got nothing against them, you know. Some of them, like George and his family you met, I get along fine with. They’re good friends of mine.’
The contrast between the beautiful multicultural city he’d spent the week before exploring and this little back-country village struck him then. In cities people can live in their own ethnic groups, maintaining their own cultures and observances without friction, but in a place like this there is no avoiding the other. The divide between indigenous and immigrant, even the native-born, seemed palpable here.
‘So,’ she went on, ‘What is it you want to ask him about? The chief?’
‘Jimmy Lyle,’ he answered. ‘I want to know what they, you know, the First Nations people think about him now.’ She didn’t respond. It seemed he’d lost whatever intimacy their Scottish commonality had gifted him. He had become complicated now, someone not entirely straight or trustworthy, someone who knew too much. He could see it in her eyes as she lifted the coffee cups from in front of him and made gestures towards having work to do.
‘Westering Home,’ she said, suddenly, her face brightening.
‘Sorry?’
‘That was the song, my great-grandmother’s greatest hit. You know it?’
‘Yes, I do remember it,’ he replied. He wasn’t at all sure that it really was written by Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser, but if it was one of her family myths, he wasn’t about to disabuse her of the notion right there and then.
‘Whistle the tune, then?’ she said, in plaintive tone, as if she herself had forgotten.
So he did. He began to whistle it and, as he did, fragments of words began to crystallise from his childhood memory. He began to sing. ‘Westering home with a song in the air, light in the eye and it’s goodbye to care, laughter o’ love and a welcoming there, isle of my heart my own land.’
Her face was suddenly a picture of childish delight. ‘Oh yes!’ she exclaimed, ‘I remember it now. My mother used to sing it to me. Sing it again!’ And so the two dueted, those four lines he could recall. And when it was over, they both laughed heartily.
‘I believe it was based on an old Gaelic song about the island of Islay,’ he said, getting his breath. ‘Maybe that was where your family first came from?’
She hesitated, frowned, thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think so. I never heard of that – Islay?’ Her eyes glazed, turned sad, as if the song from the old country had let some tide of regret sweep in from beyond the walls of her biker shrine. The look of the little girl who had sung so sweetly disappeared from her face and she grew pensive. ‘Y’know, I really wish I’d asked my mother more, you know, about Scotland and all, while she was still alive.’
These words set him thinking just that. He grimaced. ‘My mother died six months ago,’ he said. ‘So I know exactly what you mean.’
‘It’s a tough loss,’ she said. The bossy matron of bikers seemed long gone at that moment. ‘There’s so much I don’t know about the family. Never will now.’ But then, as if she caught herself slipping into a despondency she desperately wanted to avoid, she smiled. ‘You know the other song she used to sing to me? Marie’s Wedding?’
It was clear from her pronunciation that she identified with the girl Mairi who she almost shared a name with. ‘I do,’ he said. ‘A very popular song in Scotland to this day.’
‘That one I can sing,’ she said, and she did, doing a little dance step while holding the edge of her pinafore, out to either side. It was a little incongruous, there in the land of Harley Davidson and ZZ Top, but he applauded.
The interview ended quietly, quite naturally. The awkward moment that had occurred, to do with the local chief and the struggle for water rights, had passed away easily in their singing, so that when he stepped across the bike-tyre signatures and pushed open the heavy timber door, she was there at his side, nodding and saying she hoped he’d come by again. She had a lot of things her mother had left her and she hadn’t really known what to do with them, hadn’t really thought about them until now, if he wanted to have a look. He promised to call back sometime.
Outside in the blazing sun, leaving the cool AC air that was gathered in the darkness of the cabin, the noonday heat was overwhelming. He felt himself begin to sweat before he’d even crossed the car-park. He took the Avon sun-cream from his backpack and squirted some on his fingers, then massaged it into his neck, and spread it over his bare arms. Already they were red and beginning to freckle, as his skin always did, rather than tan evenly. A few more days of this and he’d be one big freckle, his pink Scottish skin blistered and sore. He had to find some shade, and soon. Walking down towards the old acacia avenue, where the remaining trees offered some respite from the desert sun, he understood properly why water should be the cause of dispute here. The dryness in his throat caused him to catch his breath and swallow uncomfortably. It was like those days when he was having the radiotherapy, when he’d wake in the night in agony, reaching for the painkiller by the bedside and drink it down as if it was some lifesaving antidote.
And yet here it was, the Thompson River charging through the canyon at great speed, billions upon billions of gallons of the stuff just there, yet out of reach. He felt a strong urge to try to find a place where he could get down the bank, to at least dip his feet in the cold water, but the current was too swift and the swollen river had covered whatever shore there might be when the waters were lower. He would be swept away in seconds.
And he remembered again the story he’d read from 1858, the year John MacLeod left Aberdeen for the New World, of the headless bodies of French gold-miners that were carried downstream to Yale, where they circled in a great eddy next to the miners’ camp. How they had been decapitated by the people then called Couteau Indians by the whites, the very N’laka’pamux people Lyle came to live among twenty years later. The dead miners were rapists, their victims women of the tribe, and so the Couteau men took revenge. How back then, white settler and ‘Indian’ hardly knew anything of each other. Native people who had never left the canyon and the lands around it saw only a few ragged miners on their traditional lands, and meted out their own natural justice to the criminals. So they floated the headless bodies downstream, towards where the whites were coming from, a silent message that there was a different way of life upriver, a different set of values which would not condone that kind of brutality. How the white gold-miners looked upstream and thought much the same, that brutality which could behead a white man would not be tolerated.
The Scotsman found himself a shaded spot overlooking the river, and fished the book with the story from his bag, to remind himself of the details. While many of the more timid miners left the region, frightened off by the fearsome reputation of the ‘knife’ Indians, others stayed – hardened Civil War veterans who had come north from the Californian gold rush demanded immediate justice, and organised the more belligerent into a small army to march upstream and teach the Indians a lesson. Six regiments were assembled. One faction, formed mostly of southerners under the command of a Captain Graham, wanted to exterminate the enemy wholesale, but the largest group, led by Captain Snyder, favoured pacification. Snyder insisted distinction be made between war-like and friendly, and that messengers be sent ahead for natives to display a white flag as a sign of peace if they did not want to be harmed. The ragged army marched up the canyon to Spuzzum, one of the few crossing points, where 3000 panicked miners had gathered, unable to move in any direction for fear of what might await them.
