macCLOUD FALLS, page 36
‘What about bears?’ Gil asked.
‘Oh they’ll be around here somewhere,’ Gordon laughed.
Sara hung behind a bit, to let Veronika catch up. She’d been meandering, looking at the plants and trees, but lost in thought, letting Hero sniff at everything that caught his nose.
‘Are you feeling okay?’ Sara asked.
Veronika glanced up. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I was wondering what Hero’s so interested in.’
Sara looked at her intently. ‘Could be bear or moose scent. Wolves even. But if you don’t mind me saying, you do seem a little subdued since your cell went crazy back there.’
Veronika was a bit surprised at her forthrightness. ‘Ah well, yes,’ she admitted. ‘There’s stuff happening at home. In fact, I was just thinking that I really need to get back.’
‘But you’ll stay the weekend, won’t you?’
‘I don’t know. I should really… this is Sunday, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, of course. Why?’
‘It’s just that I’ve lost track a little.’
Sara seemed to understand, though she appeared a little disappointed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘If it’s something you feel you want to talk about, I am a good listener.’
Veronika looked into her kind face, her calm blue eyes, and believed her. She looked up to where the men were, some twenty or thirty metres ahead, each holding a leather handle on the hamper. Out of earshot.
‘It’s very complicated,’ she said.
‘Family?’
She thought of her mother, sitting at home on the porch, no doubt, after eating her tiny lunch, listening to CBC on the radio with her instant coffee as she always did. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not family as such. At least, not mine.’
‘A friend’s?’
‘Kind of.’
‘A man?’
Veronika felt an odd rush of relief. ‘You’re good at guessing games.’
‘Well, I don’t want to pry, but I feel you and I have connected. And if you do want to tell someone about it, maybe it can help make sense of things for you.’
‘It’s not that I don’t want to, and yes, I feel we’re friends too. But I wouldn’t know where to begin.’ And as they walked, she wondered then whether this woman she’d met, who’d spent her whole life with her teenage sweetheart, could hope to understand the mess she’d got herself into, any more than she herself could understand what it must be like to spend a life with just one person, away in the wilds, having a family, baking, making quilts, looking after animals and gardening, all those years of caring and tending to others. It was the kind of life she’d always been wary of, following her mother’s example, the well-trodden path for women over centuries, and one she’d rejected out of hand when she was younger. Yet Sara seemed happy in a way her mother never had been, and her quiet calm suggested an inner repose, perhaps a kind of contentment that no quantity of yoga classes and therapy could provide. Or was that idealising the situation? Hadn’t she suffered the loss of her children when they took off out into the world on their own?
The trail began to open out, and in the distance they could see a faint mist rising from a hidden valley. Veronika heard a roar.
‘Where are you taking us?’ she asked.
‘That’s the waterfall,’ Sara replied, and at that instant, as if he’d heard the word and understood it, Hero lunged forward, pulling the leash out of Veronika’s loose grip, and went haring down the trail.
‘Hero!’ she shouted, in a panic. Gordon and Gil turned at the sound of her call. ‘Here boy!’ But Hero wasn’t stopping for anything, he was tearing along the trail at full speed towards the sound of water falling, and for a moment a terror gripped Veronika. She saw Gil drop his end of the hamper and step into the path of the dog, crouching down to try to tackle him. Hero kept on running, straight at the human obstacle and as he reached the two men he dodged between them. Gil spun round and grabbed him by the fur on his back as he went past, and then both disappeared out of sight, pulled along by Hero’s velocity.
Veronika screamed. In her mind she saw them falling, down into whatever abyss was hidden, and she started to run towards the place they’d been, but felt her knees give way and she fell to the ground. The tears that had welled up earlier suddenly started to flow.
Then Gordon shouted back. ‘It’s okay, Gil’s got him. He’s okay. It’s fine.’ She looked up from where she’d fallen and saw Gil appear from below the rise with Hero in his arms, struggling a little but otherwise all right.
Sara helped her up. ‘It’s all right, he’s fine,’ she said.
‘I wasn’t paying attention,’ Veronika sobbed. ‘He just pulled the leash out of my hand.’
‘It’s okay, dear. Really, it’s okay.’
And then Gil was there, Hero in his arms, perfectly fine, grinning in that mischievous doggie way of his.
‘I thought you’d gone over the edge,’ she said, to them both, sobbing a little.
Gil smiled. ‘We did fall a bit, but there’s a big wide shelf down there. I got him by the fur and just held on.’
‘Hero,’ she said, taking him in her arms. ‘You are a one. And you, my Scotch friend, you’re a hero too.’
‘Yep, nice tackle, buddy,’ Gordon said. ‘You must have played football.’
‘Rugby,’ Gil said, smiling. ‘Though I was never much good in the scrum.’
It took a little while before they were ready to carry on. Sara tried to clean the mud off Veronika’s trousers, while Veronika smoothed out Hero’s thick back fur and lectured him gently on the danger he’d so narrowly avoided. Gordon and Gil picked up the hamper, which was none the worse for the drop, though Gordon said the champagne would probably need to rest a while before they tried to open it.
‘You brought champagne?’ Veronika asked Sara.
‘Yes. Well, prosecco. And I think you could do with a glass as soon as possible,’ she said. ‘I think you’re suffering from shock a little. You’re absolutely white.’
So they walked on, following the trail around the gorge above the hidden waterfall, fine mist settling gently on their clothes, their ears now engulfed by the constancy of the water’s roar, and Hero’s leash wound tightly around Gil’s wrist. When it finally came into view, they stopped, Gil and Veronika completely overawed by the sight, Gordon and Sara standing proud, gauging their reaction. Cloud Falls was dwarfed in comparison. The waterfall emerged from a deep cleft in the cliff, falling in a perfect horsetail, arcing downwards. And it was big, the drop three times higher than Niagara Falls, Gordon said. In the winter, Sara told them the water froze into a cone that almost reached to its full height.
‘Another wow?’ she asked them, as they stood admiring.
Gil smiled. ‘Beyond wow – triple wow. Sublime.’
‘Multiple wows, I think,’ Veronika said, and they all laughed, happy to hear her back amongst them, joking again. But she felt crushed inside, somehow, as if the day had robbed her of all strength. Her terror had lasted no more than ten seconds, but it was intimation of how swiftly things could be lost, and a reminder of the fear she’d endured when the diagnosis was confirmed. That was when she’d begun to think that his attention would never be fully on her. That time, when she needed someone more than ever before, he didn’t step up. The flowers were nice, and the card poetic, but he wasn’t there.
The picnic spot was a bench and table almost on the edge of the precipice, from where the majesty could be admired in comfort. Sara opened the hamper and began bringing out plates and glasses. Veronika sat on the bench next to her, and offered help, but none was required. The ‘champagne’ was still resting, but Sara had brought a bottle of white wine and passed a glass to her. Gil had tied Hero’s leash firmly round a sapling, but Veronika took hold of him with her free arm and held on tightly all the same, while he stood gazing at the torrent below, as if trying to measure the sheer scale of it by some doggy calculation.
‘Helmcken Falls,’ Gordon said, ‘named after an early settler, a medical man.’
‘I think I’ve heard of him,’ Gil added. ‘Wasn’t he Hudson’s Bay?’
‘I’m not sure it was The Bay, but he settled in Victoria over on the island and ran the first hospital, I believe. He was a well-loved man, did a lot for the early colonists.’
‘There’s a street named after him downtown in Vancouver,’ Veronika said. ‘At least I assume it’s the same guy?’
‘That’s right. But the thing with these falls is, Helmcken never actually visited them. They were named in his honour.’
The picnic had emerged from the hamper – sandwiches neatly cut in triangles, salmon and cucumber salad, egg cress, chicken. Sara had brought plates and napkins for everyone, even salt and pepper shakers.
‘I feel like we’re Victorian pioneers ourselves,’ Veronika said, as she ate and Hero sniffed the air in hope of landing a few scraps. It was a fine repast indeed, savoured and enjoyed by all, and when that was done, a homemade chocolate cake appeared from the basket too. After he’d eaten, Gil got up and wandered off along the cliff towards a wooden viewing platform that jutted out above the falls. He wanted a little time to himself, so didn’t announce his intention, and he was glad when no one followed him. The incident with the dog had shaken him, and although he hadn’t said anything, he’d banged his right elbow when he landed. Now it was aching. But what was worse was the space he felt had opened between him and Veronika. He’d detected it before, times when she’d withdraw without actually going anywhere, and he thought he knew the cause now – whoever it was who was sending those texts.
Standing above the torrent of water churning hundreds of feet below, he felt again the void that had troubled him so, the sense of the futility of existence that had hung around ever since his diagnosis. And his high-flown aim of writing the book that would justify his youthful ambition wasn’t going anywhere. He’d barely written a word since he got lost in the Echte Valley, since she and he had begun their journey. And when they were attuned, joking and talking, he didn’t wonder about that, or miss it. This dependency was a new and worrying thing – in a few days, he’d come to need her company in order to feel good. But their journey would end, she’d go back to her life and he’d have to leave.
When he got back to the picnic station, the others had packed the things away, and they began the return journey along the cliff path to the trail, and the parked truck.
The way home was quiet. Gordon put a CD of Bruce Cockburn on, and no one spoke for a long time, just let the acoustic guitar-picking ripple over them as they drove. As they approached Clearwater, Veronika waited apprehensively for her cell to find a signal again, as it had on the way north. It was in her purse, but she had positioned that so she could look at the phone inside. She’d turned it to ‘vibrate’, so no one else would know, but the screen would light and she would see that, if any new messages were received.
You thought it was over, but it’s just like before, Bruce Cockburn sang. Will there never be an end to the Indian wars?
She waited, breathing lightly, but nothing happened and pretty soon they were south of the little town, heading down the highway at speed along the beautiful Thompson River. She smiled and leaned back, grabbed Hero’s neck and rubbed her face in his fur.
‘Well, I think that was one of the best picnics ever, lad, despite your bad behaviour,’ she said, and looked at Gil, but he was gazing out the side window at the river and didn’t acknowledge her.
‘You know,’ Gordon said, above the Cockburn soundtrack, ‘Tomorrow we could go…’
‘I think Veronika has to get back to Vancouver tomorrow,’ Sara interrupted, and looked over her shoulder to check. ‘Don’t you?’
Gil turned to face Veronika, wondering what she’d say. ‘I kinda have to,’ she answered. ‘I’d love to stay longer, but I really can’t. But Gil could stay, take the Greyhound back, like he did going up to the canyon in the first place.’
He felt a terribly disproportionate sense of rejection at those words. But of course, he had anticipated something of this sort earlier. ‘Of course I could,’ he said, with no enthusiasm. ‘It stops in Little Forks. That’s how I was planning to get here in the first place, before you appeared, trying to save my life.’
He said this with a grin, but the tone had a little barb to it. In the front of the truck, Gordon and Sara looked at each other, but didn’t speak. In the back seat, Veronika gave him another of her pained smiles, her forehead furrowed and her eyes worried.
When they got back to base, Veronika said she thought she’d take a nap. The wine had gone to her head, and she was still a little in shock after Hero’s dash towards the precipice. Sara had work to do in the smallholding, and so Gil and Gordon were left by themselves.
Veronika put her glasses on and read his texts again upstairs, and lay on the bed wondering if he’d really gone and done it, or if he was just trying to reel her back in with promises. It wouldn’t be the first time. In the years since they’d met, there had been a few occasions when she felt like it was pointless to continue on, that there would never be a good outcome. In her mind she heard Joni’s ‘Song for Sharon’. She’d always identified with that lyric, the white lace wedding dress haunting her.
But as she drifted off into sleep, all of that slipped away, and she heard instead Gil’s voice, saying ‘before you appeared, trying to save my life,’ in that vaguely sarcastic tone of his. And then she saw him leaping after Hero, the two of them disappearing from her sight. She shivered at the thought of what could have happened. Sometimes I take
a great notion, he’d sung at Jericho Beach, when they came to the bench with the little plaque that said Goodnight Irene. Which was one thing. But to fall when you didn’t mean to jump, that was quite another.
She woke to footsteps on the stairs and someone talking – Gordon and Gil. Gordon said, ‘The study’s in here.’ A nearby door opened. Then she heard Gil say, ‘So this is where you keep the books.’ And the door closed. Their voices were muffled then. She could catch the occasional word, but not the whole conversation.
In the study, Gil was scanning the bookshelves. He saw a few titles he himself had carefully wrapped and posted out, wondering then about the address, and this man with the Scottish name who seemed so keen to collect Scottish books. And not just any Scottish books, but good ones, volumes that not everyone knew, even if it was their field of interest. And there among them were four different editions of Burns’ poems, well-thumbed, and one with its front cover hanging on by just a paper sliver.
‘Guess you’ll recognise some of these,’ Gordon said.
‘I was just thinking exactly that. Little did I realise that one day I’d be looking at them again, all the way over here.’
‘Well, I’m very glad you are, buddy. Do you think we should get down to business?’
Gil laughed. ‘You make it sound as if that’s the only reason I’m here.’
‘No, my friend, I know that’s not how it is. But it is important to me and Sara.’ Gordon bent down to a cupboard beneath the bookshelves and pulled out a plain dark wooden box. He set it on the desk and, from around his neck, he took a small brass key on a chain, and placed it into the lock.
‘Mechanism’s as good as new,’ he said, turning the key.
The moment was upon them – the wooden box lay on the desk, lid still shut, but unlocked now. Gordon’s hand put down the small brass key, opened the lid and lifted out a hand-sewn leather case, the size and shape of a book. He undid the button fastening, and inside lay a wrapping of thin yellowed paper. He lifted the contents out and laid it on the desk, then tentatively unwrapped the paper.
‘Sit down,’ Gordon said, ‘Take a look.’ He indicated the wooden captain’s chair by the desk.
As soon as Gil caught sight of the blue covers, he knew it was the real thing. He took it gently from the careful hands that proffered it, and felt it was exactly what it was supposed to be. Gil smiled. ‘So where was this when the wildfires came? Not in the river, I hope?
Gordon laughed. ‘No, this was in the truck ready for evacuation. But you know, that did make me stop and think, about what’s really valuable in my life. When you have to sort out the essential from the rest. This, and a couple of other books I inherited, were the only ones that made the cut. Mind you, the truck was so full of animals, it was like Noah’s ark. Don’t think Noah took many books with him.’
‘Papyrus, maybe, though probably it was too early even for that. Maybe the odd clay tablet.’ He turned the book over in his hands, lifted it to his nose, sniffed at it.
Gordon laughed. ‘So what do you think?’
‘Well, when you first wrote to me about this, I thought it was probably just the facsimile printed in Toronto, just because you were in Canada. Then when you said your grandfather brought it out here with him, I thought it was probably one of the Edinburgh editions. That would be remarkable enough, but now that I see it, I think you may well have one of the lost firsts.’
He carefully opened the cover, feeling as if he should be wearing a pair of library gloves. The title page read as it should:
POEMS,
CHIEFLY IN THE
SCOTTISH DIALECT,
BY ROBERT BURNS.
followed by the anonymous epigraph:
THE Simple Bard, unbroken by rules of Art,
He pours the wild effu∫ions of his heart :
And if in∫pir’d, ‘tis Nature’s pow’rs in∫pire ;
Her’s all the melting thrill, and her’s the kindling fire.
and below that again,
KILMARNOCK :
PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON.
and then the date: M,DCC,LXXXVI.
Gil could just make out a faint pencil insertion to the left of this, the word ‘July’. He leaned back in the chair, looked up at Gordon and smiled. ‘I think this looks very good, my friend. Very fine indeed.’
