macCLOUD FALLS, page 24
‘I’d like to go there, to see it for myself.’
‘Then go,’ Hesther said. ‘Perhaps that is the path you need to find.’
Kyle showed him out, returning him to the tarmac road, with the railway lines in front. As he said his farewell, Kyle held his gaze for a moment and told him to be careful. The path was easy to lose, it was wilderness, and there were rattlesnakes and bighorn.
The Scotsman felt dizzy in the light and heat of the day. He sat for a while by the riverbank, unable to think. His whole body felt strangely energised, but his mind was blank. He got up and seemed to float slowly back to the bridge, crossed without once thinking of the jump, and made his way to the inn. Something pivotal had taken place, but he didn’t know what, or how to process it. It was a very long way from the Cancer Unit in Edinburgh.
He lay on the bed in his room for a long time, motionless. It was as if his body was entirely at peace. Not a single muscle twitched. His mind, too, seemed calm. The breeze blowing the blinds was the only motion. A CPR train passed and the room shook with the noise but still he was unmoved. Then he slept.
The sound of the tree-planters woke him. It seemed as if they were very far away, almost in another dimension. He lay awake, as if paralysed. Rising took a great effort, but when he did, when he went and washed, he felt amazingly refreshed.
Out the window, he could see the berry-picker was in the field again, between the inn and the river, next to the reservation. He took his camera and zoomed in, trying to get a shot of her as she bent among the bushes. Something archetypal, from ages past, among the contemporary mesh of metal rail and wire – ‘Native Woman picking berries’, such as Lyle might have photographed, way back in 1910. But when he zoomed in, he realised he recognised her. It was Deeanna, the painter, the rebel, the woman he had nearly met twice, but hadn’t. And he took it in his mind to go down there, to greet her in the field where she was. He put his boots on.
The field was not as it had appeared from the inn. A deep bank lay hidden, like a ha-ha, and he struggled down to the plain by the river. Whatever cultivation had once existed there had clearly been fairly haphazard and he had to stride through rough ground, a scrubby sparse woodland. The bushes where the woman was busy picking fruit seemed natural, not farmed. She was dressed differently, it seemed, from the way she’d appeared in the centre that day, like a moody she-Elvis in her fringed jacket. She wore a yellow printed-pattern sari-like garment, and carried a loose cloth bag slung around her waist into which she placed whatever the crop was. Her thick black hair was pinned up somehow.
As he approached she looked up, as if sensing or scenting someone, straightened her back so to gaze at him and stood watching as he came slowly closer, like a deer waiting to see whether the threat was sufficient to warrant elegant flight. It was as if she might metamorphose in an instant to some spirit animal self and disappear. But the closer he got the more obvious it became that, whatever her spirit animal was, it was not inclined to flee. His steps slowed.
‘Hi,’ he said, from a few paces distance. ‘I’m…’
She interrupted. ‘I know who you are.’ Her expression was non-committal, neither friendly nor unfriendly. But he felt as though she might eat him. ‘You’re the guy who’s been asking about Jimmy Lyle.’
‘My name’s Bert. I wanted to talk with you.’ He reached where she was standing, next to a spidery bush that shot long stems from its heart, hung with small red berries. ‘What are you picking?’
‘Salmonberry.’
He noticed the berry was not unlike a wild raspberry or a blackberry. ‘Are they good?’
‘Sure. Try some.’ He picked one from the long stem that swayed in the canyon breeze. It was both sharp and sweet, subtle and wild. ‘So you’re writing a book?’ she asked.
‘These are good,’ he said, and picked another. ‘Well, I’m researching. Maybe a book, maybe something different, maybe nothing. I saw your painting – at least I think it was you? Of Jimmy Lyle’s wife. Antko?’
At this, her expression brightened, her pose relaxed.
‘It was you, wasn’t it? Deeanna?’
‘It was.’ Her voice was gentler than he remembered it, from the two confrontations he’d witnessed. She too ate a berry, examining him closely as she did so. ‘To me, he’s not the story, she is. To us, she is the one who made it possible for him to write what he did.’
‘I realise that now,’ he said. ‘I understand that nothing he did could have been done without her. Without cooperation.’
She nodded, accepting. ‘The elder you were talking to told me you’re like a native back in Scotland, like Jimmy Lyle was. I didn’t know that.’
‘He was, in a way. But it’s not quite the same as here. There was, a long time ago, a real difference between peoples, certainly a different language, even a different way of thinking about the world, but nowadays I don’t many people really think of it in that way. Native or not. People intermarried, you know. Differences were lost. I’m not myself, really. I don’t have much connection with that side of the family.’
‘Don’t you think it’s important to remember those things?’
‘Well, yes. Up to a point, I do.’
She put her head on one side and looked at him carefully, as if making an evaluation. A proud stare. ‘The elder said you were alright,’ she mused.
‘Your godmother, isn’t she?’ he asked.
She seemed surprised. ‘How do you know?’
‘She told me. She’s an amazing woman. And ninety-nine!’
‘She sure is. A survivor.’ Another long stare followed, weighing things up. Then she said, ‘I guess you may be alright. Wanna walk with me a bit? There’s a place down here by the river where I like to sit.’
He nodded, and she led him down through the scrub of bushes, past the occasional salmonberry plant where she stopped to pick a few to put in her bag. The roar of the river grew louder as they approached. About a hundred yards away was the electricity pole on which the ospreys had their nest.
‘The river is high right now. Snow melt up the high mountains,’ she said.
They reached a small crook, an indentation in the flow, where a great flat boulder had refused to give way to the pummelling water as the earth around it had done. She walked carefully out onto its table and crouched down. ‘This is a good seat, out of sight,’ she said. ‘Come, sit.’ He clambered up, joined her there. She was staring deep into the eddying flow. ‘I always used to come here when I was a girl. If I wanted to get away from the family,’ she said, without looking at him.
‘You grew up here then?’
‘Sure. On the reservation. Me and all my brothers and sisters, in our tiny house.’ She grimaced at the thought. ‘Left soon as I could, though, before I was really old enough. Caught a Greyhound down the valley to the city with my boyfriend. I was thirteen, he was sixteen. We ran away.’
‘Wow,’ he said. ‘That sounds brave.’
‘We were just kids, didn’t know what we doing. Ended up on the downtown eastside. You won’t know where that is, but it’s in Vancouver. Like skid row to my folks. It was nothing we had ever seen before. He got a bed in a man’s hostel, I had a place across the road. Through the day we hung out together. Then one day I was out front of the hostel waiting for him to come out, and I looked around me. I saw one guy on the nod with heroin, another raking through bins, and then a little old native lady came by, pushing her trolley. You know, one of those supermarket trolleys, with everything she had in the world in it. She could have been my grandmother easy, cause I never knew them, they both ended up down there too. And then I heard this voice in my head, whispering, saying Deeanna you need to get out of here, you are too good for this, you need to do better than we did, for all of us.’
‘A voice?’
‘It was my grandmother whispering. I’m sure of it. One of them, one of the grandmothers I had never known. She was telling me to leave, to go back home before it was too late for me, like it was too late for her by the time she realised.’
‘So you came back here?’
‘No. The very next day we got caught, put into foster care. I didn’t come back here till around four years ago. But I didn’t go back to the downtown eastside either.’ She opened the bag she was carrying, full of salmonberries. ‘Want some more?’
He picked a few out, asked, ‘What changed?’
She shrugged. ‘I always felt this was home, that this was my band, my people. My place. Always tried to stay in touch. Even though I thought I couldn’t live here again. I only came back when my father died. Then the house was empty. At least empty of living people. It’s still full of all their ghosts.’
‘All?’
‘My brothers. My momma. And him, my father.’
‘They don’t sound like happy ghosts that are easy to live with.’
‘No, they’re not. They’re not at peace, not at rest. No more than they were when they were alive. I grew up with violence. It kind of haunts you forever after. My family was not a happy one.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘Three dead. One in prison. One in the US. But me, I am a grandmother.’ Her mood shifted then, and she smiled. ‘Yep. Just thirty-nine years old and I got me a little granddaughter, two years old. So you know, I try, I try to be positive. But it’s hard at times.’
He took a few more berries from the open bag that lay on the flat rock between them. ‘What about your painting? I really thought the one I saw was good.’
‘I don’t have a chance to now. Back when I did that, I had a place to work. I was living with this guy who was kind of an artist, used to make things for tourists. He sort of recognised my ability, helped me develop. Most of time I made the things he wanted me to make, so we could sell them, but he knew a lot about art, not just native designs, he’d studied a lot himself in the public library. He encouraged me to try. But he was evil with liquor and would beat up on me. Finally, I had to leave. And I left everything I’d ever painted with him, except that one picture of Antko. I’d given it my godmother before. The lady you met that day at the centre.’
She was gazing out over the frothing river, the maddening current, towards the village on the far bank. ‘I use to do pottery as well, but I couldn’t get my wheel or my kiln. He wouldn’t let me. So here I am. Back home again, the black sheep. Even my godmom says she doesn’t like me.’ She laughed at that, as if it was intended to be ironic, but it was a bitter sound all the same, full of hurt and loneliness. The Scotsman looked at her as she sat there, staring at the river’s incessant turbulence, this strong-willed determined person who had been thrown around in the midstream of her life, her talents unnourished.
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘Why am I telling you all this? This isn’t the story you want to hear. It’s not about your hero, Jimmy Lyle.’
He scratched at his developing beard. He hadn’t shaved since he had begun to write. ‘Maybe not, but like you said, maybe the story I came here to find was the wrong one. I didn’t expect…’ He hesitated.
‘What?’ she coaxed.
‘It’s hard to explain. But I suppose my ideas were all very romantic, you know, this tiny wild west town where once upon a time my ancestor came, where he found his way and learned to hunt and speak the local tongue, how he became a great man, expert in all the native culture.’
‘Some of that is true,’ she said. ‘But what it doesn’t tell is who made it possible for him, who taught him those things.’
‘I’m learning that.’
‘What made him different from all the other settlers who wanted to learn is that he had the help of a remarkable woman, who could persuade her people, especially other women, to talk with him, to tell him their stories and sing their songs.’
Suddenly, across the distant rock face of The Chief, the shape of an osprey materialised, flying quickly towards the nest on the top of the pole. It hovered for a moment, then disappeared out of sight on top of the platform.
‘This place is incredible,’ the Scotsman said, more to himself than her.
‘I guess it is,’ she answered. ‘Certainly wherever else I went I never felt like I do here, even though I wanted to get out of here when I was a kid. But now I know it wasn’t the place, but the situation. The place, this river, these mountains I have always loved.’
Her tone was so earnest, he didn’t for a moment doubt her sincerity. And the thought of the secret valley occurred to him.
‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘Where is the Echte valley?’
He felt her stiffen in mild surprise. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I want to see where the cabin is, where Antko and Jimmy Lyle lived back in the early days.’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘Your godmother told me. She said that no one but the band members know where it really is.’
‘She told you that?’
‘She did, yes.’
‘Huh,’ she said, and gathered up the bag of berries. ‘She must really have liked you. But why do want to go there? The house he built is right here in town, and you can see where he lived later up at High Ridge.’
He sighed, looking for the right words to explain. ‘It’s a feeling that I’ve had, the longer I am here, the more it seems to me that I have to go there, to the cabin. Like it is the source. And what you’ve said about her, Antko, being the key person in his life confirms that. I want to see where they lived together.’
At that moment, the gentle wind that blew through the canyon seemed to rise, and the berry bushes, the scrub grass bent over in response. Without any warning, she too jumped up from the flat rock by the river’s edge, her long yellow dress crumpled around her, as if summoned by something he could not sense. Her dark hair had worked itself loose from the hairpins that held it, and it fell around her face, veiling her expression momentarily.
‘I have to go,’ she said, fastening it up again. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Okay, but will you tell me about the cabin first?’ he asked.
She was silent for a long while. He felt his smile slowly slip, caught in the snare of her stare. Finally she said, ‘You shouldn’t go there, I don’t think it would be right for you to do that.’ The warmth he had felt emanate from her as she’d told him about her life had now disappeared, blown away by the canyon wind, maybe. Something had spooked her, whatever it was he didn’t know, and she wasn’t about to explain.
He sat on the flat rock watching as she wove her way up through the bushes, away from the riverbank, up the slope in the direction of the little reservation next to the Indian church, where the old blue band office could be seen at the top of the rise. He was thinking of her life as she had described it, running away from the canyon for the city, brave and hopeful at first, not knowing the scale of the world she was about to be plunged into, then plucked out of skid row for foster care as a prisoner, leaving foster care to become the dependant assistant to a maker of tourist art, a frustrated bully when drunk, while all the time that proud individuality she had expressed in the painting he had seen was repressed, kept down by the circumstances of her life.
She was a remarkable woman, just as Lyle’s wife had been, wrestling with the strictures that bound her. And had Antko done the same? How had the frontier world of the 1880s regarded her, how difficult had it been for her to flourish, as the Indian wife of the settler Lyle? In her day, she must have been every bit as much of a rebel. Maybe that was why they had retreated to the secret cabin, away from the gossip of the little town and the tumult of the great river.
Glancing up the slope, he saw that the figure in the landscape was gone. Now only the wind, the river, the looming shadow of The Chief and the faint smell of sagebrush were with him. After a minute or two he wondered if she had really been there at all, or had she simply been some spectre, some spirit which had appeared to him briefly? Truly a ‘native daughter’?
He had to go. He would go, to the secret valley, to find the sacred cabin.
* * *
Third Dance
‘Country & Western
Capital of Canada’
(Square dance)
* * *
SHE CLOSED THE lid of his laptop and laid it aside. Her furry companion raised his head and together they left the ginger pink man to his slumber.
Outside, the moon was high above the canyon wall, just beyond full, filling the gloom with a faint glow, and laying highlights on houses and ridges. They walked, a leash connecting them, along the road by the multiple railtracks, past the waiting trucks with their insignia and graffiti. Down the bank to the far side, the rolling river. And the old bridge up ahead.
So she’d been right, he had thought of jumping in, as she’d intuited. She pictured him now, lying there on the motel bed, wrapped like a mummy in a white cotton sheet, except with his little pink face poking out and its gingery beard growth. A bearded baby in swaddling clothes. Safe. She laughed.
And she stopped, gazing slowly from the southern canyon’s turn beyond vision, to its northern equivalent. The town was defined by those twists in the geography, like the twists of candy papers.
‘Weird, isn’t it?’ she said to the dog. ‘A little guy reading books five thousand miles away has given this place a history for me.’
The dog didn’t disagree. He simply sat by her feet, watching the moving water, his upper lip giving the occasional tremble of a suppressed bark. Then she turned back towards the inn and he fell into a trot by her side. She walked on, past the inn in the other direction until she came to the old community hall, with the silhouettes painted on its boarded windows. Somehow she could see them more clearly by moonlight, not just as decorative outlines, but as memorials of a kind to the people who built this town around the ferry crossing, the pioneers. And among them were the local First Nations, pushed to the edge of town and their reservation.
Of course she knew all that. It was so deep in her understanding of this world that she barely noticed it. But here, it was all too plain, too starkly bare, too foregrounded, and Gil’s writing had given these silhouettes names and faces, had animated them. Round the side she found the little clay nameplates he’d mentioned. It was too dark to read them, but she ran her fingers over the relief of some, feeling them.
