by Fred Stenson
Frank left the group and walked to the bridge’s far end. He took Jeff’s good arm and shook it. Jeff looked up, not quite there yet; not quite in his own eyes. Frank lifted his limp hand and turned it over. He placed the rifle casing on the palm.
“Give it to her yourself.”
Frank towed Jeff to where he could see the Boer in the water. The Tommy was still talking.
“Who killed the fucking Boer, then? We weren’t firing. Were we?”
“Someone was,” said Frank.
“Well, that’s fucking genius at work. I’m asking who?”
Jeff put one knee down on the plank, as if he were faint. Then he put his legs over and dropped into the water. Frank jumped down too, and together they pulled the Boer to the bank. He was tall but light. They rolled him onto his back in some shady grass. His slouch hat was still on. Jeff pulled it off and exposed some thin reddish hair.
Frank had been thinking it was the bald Boer, the one who’d given the order to kill Young Sam. He realized what a stupid thought that was.
Jeff got to his feet and they climbed back to the road where the others waited. Frank told the Tommy he was sorry he hit him.
“I hit you a damn sight harder, and I’m not sorry.”
Frank felt his cheek. It was swollen. The view from one eye was pinched.
Frank found his carbine and slung it across his back. They walked away. The Tommys and troopers were ahead. Frank and Jeff were last.
“We’ll go home soon,” Frank said. “It’ll be all right.”
Of course he did not know if that was true.
Part Twelve
HOME
Bansha, Tipperary, 1910
Butler sat in his chair at the top of the garden, a rug across his knees and the birds chattering in the tall, ancient trees. Some days he was able to sit here and it took nothing more than the sounds of nature to make him feel busy and fulfilled. Other days—and this was one—his thoughts roved over all of his life, as if something were lost and he must find it.
He remembered how Red Crow had died, while gathering horses on the Belly River, and how, when he read that, he’d vowed to be in Ireland when his own time came, preferably out of doors. And here he was. Not that he thought today was the day, but one of these days would be, and he was proud of himself. Life was so full of compromise. A kept promise to oneself was a thing to treasure.
Butler was not a general anymore. One of his last appointments had been President of the War Office Committee investigating the War Stores Scandal. In the final report, he had accused various parties of arranging supply agreements for the benefit of their families and friends, everyone profiting unfairly and illegally. He was applauded for his felicity of phrase, and the report was buried deep with stones on top.
This kept him in the War Office until 1905, at which time he was finally put on the Retired List. As this implied a pension, he was able to move to Ireland. They had found this pleasant place at Bansha, not far from his childhood home.
Besides going for walks and sitting, there were occasional duties in Dublin as a champion of national education, a cause he had adopted as unlikely to wear out or go bad. He was also called upon occasionally for speeches, and he marvelled at his own retriever-like response to anyone’s desire to hear his thoughts and stories.
His doctor was also in Dublin, and his most recent visits there had not been encouraging. After listening to his lungs and heart, the doctor would get a faraway look and begin to wax metaphysical. Massaging Butler with hound’s eyes, he would say, “I wouldn’t worry too much about the pain, William. Maybe one should just be thankful one’s body has carried one so far.”
His former doctor would never have said such stupid things, but unfortunately Butler had outlived him. If he went to the new one often enough, he really would be beyond earthly cares. One of the sawbones’ bits of wisdom would choke him, or cause a vein in his head to pop. And there he’d be: speeding toward the celestial light.
Thanks to the doctor’s pithy reminders, Butler had been trying to put his affairs in order. The legal part had not taken long, for there was no great fortune to disperse. Much less simple to organize was the meeting with his Maker. His beliefs had changed so much over time that his image of himself had grown increasingly murky. He had given the majority of his years to military life and the protection of the British Empire. Now, the things in which he no longer believed included the British Empire, the supremacy of British institutions, and war as a means to an end.
What hope, then, of standing before God and pleading innocence. He had to be guilty: either of what he had been or of what he had become.
Other than this minor possibility of being damned for eternity General Butler was quite all right with the idea of leaving the world. He did rather enjoy pretty days like this one, when the sky drooled its slow honey and birds flittered happily. But if he hung around too long, another war was sure to come.
The Boer War had taught the British nothing. From the King down to the denizens of the meanest pub, the feeling was that the Empire army had punched below its weight in Africa, but that, with more practice in foreign battlefields, it would rise again to its former splendour.
In the next war, all the ghastly modern weapons would be brought to perfection. Butler’s military proteges, the ones who still kept in touch, told him there would be new wonders. Armoured motor cars instead of horses. Flying machines that would drop bombs. Oh my, but wasn’t the future bright?
What no one seemed to understand about the Boer War was how lopsided it had been; how enormously the British had outnumbered the Boers. In the next war, there might be two giant armies of roughly equal size, both with the same far-ranging guns and all the latest gear. That was what Butler did not want to live to see.
Meanwhile, the garden sloped away into the trees and down to the brook. The thunder of guns had left him just enough hearing to enjoy the birds. Sometimes what he heard was not present. The baritone mutter of a night lion in the bush veldt. Frogs chorusing on the Nile.
Today, Butler was hearing the incredible Chinook wind, shrieking out of the valleys of the Rocky Mountains. He was seeing an old Indian, wizened and small, riding in search of his horses. One more time.
Pincher Creek, 1925
Tommy Killam was still in sales, but Killam Hardware was long gone. Tommy was on his own, representing a number of lines, including Ganong Chocolates of Stephenville, New Brunswick. The Ganong family had invented milk chocolate and the five-cent chocolate bar, and were bringing chocolate and hard candy to ordinary people. That was the beauty of it, as far as Tommy was concerned. Alberta was increasingly full of ordinary people.
At present, Tommy went about the country with horse and wagon to the towns the homestead era had popped up along the railway south of Calgary, supplying his clients on a monthly basis. But he foresaw a day when he would have his own motor car and could increase his territory and the frequency of his visits. That would make him a rich man. At present, he was working on the problem that he also needed to be a rich man to buy the motor car.
Tommy believed that money is made in the mind. Understanding the changes that are going on around you is essential to success, just as inability to understand guarantees failure. He learned this from the collapse of his father’s store. It happened when the country was filling with homesteaders—hundreds of new customers. But his father, who had never provided credit except on the quiet to select friends, could not comprehend why the new people, total strangers, thought they could come into his store and buy on time.
His failure was the failure to understand that homesteaders had no cash for most of the year, sometimes for years in a row. Without credit, they could buy nothing. His father’s compromise was to sell coupons. You could buy them in your flush times and redeem them in your hard times. Tommy tried to tell his father that this was the opposite of credit and that people would never go for it. That, too, his father could not understand, and the store had to be sold.
By that time, Tommy was a grown man in his twenties. Timothé Lebel, who ran the biggest store in Pincher Creek and was the town’s richest man, offered Tommy a job, but Tommy told him he wanted a break from store work. He had decided to be a cowboy.
The ranch that hired him was ten miles away in the Fishburn District and belonged to Frank and Eliza Adams. Adams had started his ranch using Boer War scrip. He also homesteaded and pre-empted. His father, Jim, who had been a foreman for the Cochrane Ranch, didn’t want to work for the Mormons when Billy Cochrane sold to them in 1904. He homesteaded next door to Frank, and all together it made a nice little ranch. Frank had a pretty Montana wife and two small kids, a boy and a girl. Their cattle were mostly Herefords.
At first, Tommy was disappointed to find out that Frank was a Boer War veteran. One of the things he wanted to leave behind in Pincher Creek was war talk, and the endless toasts to soldiers and war veterans at fowl dinners and oyster suppers. But here he was, trapped on a ranch with a vet. Lucky for Tommy, Frank did not go in for telling his war adventures. In fact, beyond saying he had been in that war, Frank had nothing to say about it.
With one exception.
On a spring day, Tommy and Frank went into Pincher Creek for supplies. They loaded up at Lebel’s, and Frank turned the rig around and pointed it home. But then he stopped the team and sat staring up the hill at the Catholic Church. This in itself was odd. Tommy was a Catholic but Frank wasn’t. Finally, Frank made a decision and said he needed an hour to see somebody. He offered Tommy a dollar to go to Old Aunty’s café, for a piece of pie. Or, he could come where Frank was going. Because Frank never visited anybody in town, Tommy was intrigued and said he would like to come.
Frank whipped up the Percherons and got them climbing the very steep hill. Tommy knew this was an impulse and not something Frank had planned. If it had been a plan, they would have driven the horses up here before the wagon was loaded. When they got to the top, they passed the church and Frank pulled up in front of the two-storey house next door.
This belonged to Marie Rose Smith. Marie and her husband, Jughandle, used to own a ranch higher up the Pincher Creek. The house was Marie Rose’s retirement project, for she took in boarders. The location had to do with her being a fervent Catholic.
One of her tenants, an old Englishman named Lionel Brooke, was sitting on the front veranda when Frank and Tommy drove up. He had an easel in front of him and was making a picture. Brooke used to ranch beside the Smiths. Some said he was an English lord. He was tall and thin, and wore a spade-shaped beard, snow white. He also wore a monocle, which had not been fashionable eyewear for some time.
Frank excused himself to Tommy and walked to the veranda and leaned on its railing. The team of Percherons was well behaved, so Tommy left them. He walked behind Frank to where he could hear the conversation.
Brooke kept on dabbing at the little bricks of colour in the tin. He did not act happy to see Frank.
“Come to dig up some bones, Mr. Adams?” Brooke asked.
“Maybe.”
“Do your worst, then.”
Frank said he wanted an address for a woman named Kettle. Alice Kettle.
“You’re out of luck. I sent a note to her, care of her parents in England. It was returned to me unopened from Switzerland. On the outside, she had printed, Whereabouts unknown. And below that, she scribbled, This means you, Lionel. Hurtful, but comical.”
Brooke suddenly stopped painting and leaned toward Frank, staring through his monocle. “Alice Kettle is not her name. If you were British, you would know that. Kettle is a common name and Alice is anything but common.”
Frank seemed disturbed by that, but held his ground. Brooke asked if there was anything else. When Tommy had worked in the store, that was how you got rid of a loitering customer.
Frank said he had questions about Jim Whitford. Brooke said Whitford wasn’t around. He lived at Hobbema now, with the Cree. Frank said he knew that. It wasn’t what he wanted to know.
“I want to know if he really was at the Little Bighorn.”
With surprising agility, Lionel jumped up and went into the house. They could hear the stairs groaning as he climbed. He came back out with an age-yellowed letter and sat down in front of his painting.
“There was a time many years ago when my remittance from England failed—dispute with my family. I couldn’t pay Jimmy and he quit. He had difficulty finding other work. I got to thinking about the time he served in the U.S. Cavalry as a scout. It seemed a pension should be owing, so I started writing letters. Eventually, I got this letter back.”
He handed it to Frank. Tommy went close so that he could read it too. The letter was short, and a couple of sentences had been underlined.
There will be no pension for James Whitford, U.S. Cavalry Scout.
Mr. Whitford was killed by the Sioux at the Battle of Little Bighorn.
Brooke laughed when Frank handed the letter back. “Jimmy rather liked the idea of being dead. I had to promise not to write more letters. By that time, he was doing well and did not need the money.”
A boy, ten years old or so, came walking up the hill from Main Street. He was carrying a burlap bag in one hand. When Lionel saw him, he clapped his hands and hooted. He went to the foot of the steps to greet the boy. Tommy could see that the bag was wriggling. Lionel paid the boy some money and praised him. He took the bag and started for the door of the Smith house.
“You have to go now, Adams.” He held up the wriggling bag. “Baby pigeons straight from the nest. They must be cooked immediately.”
He turned to the door.
“When did Jimmy come back from Africa?”
Lionel kept hold of the handle.
“In 1902. Now, goodbye.”
“One more thing,” said Frank. “I want to know if Jimmy was looking after me the whole time until he came home. I want to know if he ever shot a Boer who was about to shoot me.”
“You know that he followed you and looked after you.”
“But I don’t know for how long.”
“And you don’t need to know.”
Brooke went inside and let the screen door slap. They could hear him yelling Marie Rose’s name.
On the road home that day, Frank was deep in thought. Tommy finally took the reins because Frank was letting the horses wander. Tommy had decided that the queer incident and the questions had to do with the Boer War, and though he could not understand the conversation, he could see that there was something unfinished about it for Frank. Again, Tommy admired that Frank didn’t talk about the war, when men who hadn’t even been in one wouldn’t shut up about it.
That day also made Tommy think about Fred Morden. He asked Frank if he’d known Fred. Frank woke from his dream and said he’d known Fred well. They’d been in the same troop under Hugh Davidson. Tommy asked if he remembered the day Fred was killed, and Frank said he remembered it like it was yesterday. Fred, Robert Kerr, and the Miles brothers had been in one railway Cossack post, and Frank had been a few miles north in another. He explained the attack and how Fred’s bunch had been trapped, with no way to reinforce them. He told Tommy what he saw when they got to Fred’s Cossack post that evening.
“Fred was a friend of yours, then?” Frank asked Tommy when he finished.
“Good friend,” Tommy said, and to his embarrassment he started to cry.
Frank paid no attention to that. He said, “Fred Morden was an admirable fellow. I liked him too. It’s sad about war that sometimes being admirable gets you killed.”
For the rest of that day and for a week afterwards, Tommy kept thinking about Fred Morden and feeling tearful. He wasn’t a boy anymore by any means, and such a display was embarrassing. He kept seeing Fred on his beautiful bay horse, with his wolfhounds all around, and thinking about the day Fred taught him to shoot his new .22; how he’d put his face right down beside Tommy’s and told him to put the front sight in the middle of the V-sight and how to breathe and how to squeeze until the rifle
fired.
And it came to Tommy, finally, that he had loved Fred Morden, plain and simple, an idea that confused and troubled him, because it was the sort of thing that would get you beat up if you ever said it aloud.
Over the years since, Tommy had continued to think about Fred and to remember that day of revelation. Even now, with a nice woman waiting for him to have enough money to marry her, Tommy remembered the kind of love he’d had for Fred, and it embarrassed him less and less, and finally not at all. Anybody with eyes could see that young boys often felt that way about older boys who were everything they wanted to be. It was a gift, really, to have that kind of feeling, and it was sad if boys were afraid of it and tried to choke it down: sad and wasteful. Nowadays, when Tommy thought about Fred, it was with joy.
The strange irony was what might have happened if Fred Morden had not been killed, and had returned to Pincher Creek a war hero. It was possible that Tommy’s admiration, still flourishing, might have driven him into the great European war that had followed. Instead, remembering the grief that the Boer War had caused him, Tommy was determined not to go to the European war, even as many Pincher Creek fellows did—quite a few of them destined to die there in the trenches of France. Marie Rose Smith lost two sons on the same day in 1917.
Even when the older men of the town asked Tommy why he wasn’t going to fight, in that way that suggested cowardice, he kept his mind steadfastly pointed toward the future. The truth was he never intended to go to Britain or Europe, in time of war or peace. He intended to live his life right here in Alberta.
Fishburn, May 11, 1942
The end of May and snow all night. Wet, heavy spring snow that weighed down the aspen branches and pushed the bushes flat. If I was smart, I’d be out there with a broomstick knocking that snow off. Instead, I’m sitting here at the kitchen table, where I’ve been all night. It’s forty years to the day since the Boer War ended.