Prairie Grass

by Joan Soggie

  “You boys should find wives for yourselves. A good woman would give you something to think about besides drinking or shooting, help you look after your land. What are you doing with it? It’s not a ranch and it’s not a farm. Just a place for you to keep your horses and hang your hat.”

  Jacques looked down; his shoulders slumped. Pierre glared defiantly at the old man who dared scold him. His father’s chest tightened as he returned glare for glare. It was hard being known as the only half-breeds in a land taken over by strangers. What did it matter that their ancestors, Metis and Cree, once called this land home, defended their hunting ground, lived free and proud? Those days were gone and forgotten. The newcomers didn’t value the old ways. The land was being broken as fast as settlers’ ploughs could tear up the sod. Soon, it seemed, the acres the boys had accepted as their scrip land would be surrounded by fields, and they would not even be able to run their horses and cattle on open range.

  How could he blame them that they took refuge in occasional drinking sprees with other cowboys? And when comradery turned to suspicion and then to insults, what could a man do but use his fists and his feet to make his point. Jacques had been marched into a Regina jail by a couple of red-coats and was shamed Pierre had to pay the fine to buy his freedom. That had taken the last of the profit from the sale of their yearling steers.

  Maybe the boys would never marry. Maybe they would continue living here on the edge of the community growing around them until they were somehow absorbed into it or were bought out by their neighbours.

  At least, the Pradera Ranch and a few smaller ranches would always have work for the boys when they needed it. Their skill with rope and gun ensured that much.

  Jean-Jacques slapped his hat against his knee and stood up. Anything he could say had been said many times before.

  “Well. You are men, you must do as men do and make the best of what God gives you. Moi, I will ride to Meyer’s summer camp and speak to the boss. He will have work for you, at least until freeze-up. You, Jacques, you he will need for bronc bustin’ that string of ponies he got from the Jackson outfit. If you can stay off the bottle. And Pierre, he knows you’re the best shot in the country, he will want you to hunt wolf-coyotes. Hear that a big pack’s ranging this side the river, might be taking their spring calves.”

  He stood, a tall straight figure in his buckskin jacket and battered hat fringed by his own shaggy gray hair. His face was impassive but his tone gentle.

  “Your little sister Annabelle misses your songs and dancing. Come and see us next time you come to town. We will always have a place at our table for you.”

  The younger men nodded and followed him outside, watched him mount his dusty gelding and ride eastward towards the range of hills and the Pradera Ranch summer camp.

  The afternoon was calm and sunny, not too hot, no gusty wind or billowing clouds threatening a change in weather. If it were not for his concerns about his family, Jean-Jacques could have given himself over to complete enjoyment of the day. The hills had the tawny hue of summer, just as they should this time of year, and the sun-warmed air was rich with the smell of sage and wild roses. While keenly aware of the sights and smells of the land, Jean-Jacques’s mind continued to play over the scene he had just left.

  It was good the boys should make their own mistakes, find their own way, even if that meant an occasional run-in with the red-coats. But why did he still think of them as boys? They were men, they should be long past youthful foolishness. Both were older than he had been when he had first ridden into Antoine Fagnant’s yard, more than 50 years ago.

  No, he thought, their problem is bigger than resentment towards their papa.

  After all, he and Marie had done all they could to prepare their children for the only life they knew. Just as his own mother and step-father had done for him. And his world had been at least as confusing as the world Jacques and Pierre now struggled to understand. Why was it that the world seemed to change direction just when a person thought he had settled his own place in it?

  He hoped life would be easier and less bewildering for this second family of his. Little Annabelle now. She was something! Could write her name before she was three. And her mother Marie was teaching her to read, from story books she read aloud to them of an evening.

  But what Annabelle loved best were her father’s stories. When Marie closed her book, Annabelle would turn to him and say, “Now, Papa, you tell us a story!”

  She and the little boys would clamor for a tale of the old days.

  The old days. Days that were gone forever. These little ones would grow up in a world vastly different from his own, different from the one in which he raised his first family. Instead of miles of grass, today there was not one quarter section left unclaimed between Swift Current and the Saskatchewan Landing. The land was being snapped up all around the Pradera Ranch holding, too. The boys had neighbours now, a few ranchers, but many more dirt-farmers, homesteaders required by law to break up the rangeland into cultivated fields.

  He paused on a low rise to look around. The hills sprawled like tawny sleeping giants to the west. Before him the land rolled gently for a half-dozen miles before rising to blend into Pradera Ranch summer range, extending south to the river. He could see two or three sod shanties ahead.

  Jean-Jacques screwed up his face under his broad-brimmed hat, focusing his vision on the nearer soddie. He had not been this way more than once or twice since these settlers arrived a few years earlier. He’d heard the homestead was being proved up by a young family from Minnesota. Even from this distance, a quarter of a mile away, he could make out the figure of a woman, her full skirt accentuating her slight figure, standing beside a horse. As the woman returned to the soddie and the horse plodded slowly past the sod house and down the hill, he realized that it carried a child. About the same size as his little Annabelle, he guessed.

  Ah, mon petit, you will grow up quickly in this country. This land may belong to you. But you may belong to the land, too, just as I have, all my life.

  Mildly curious, Jean-Jacques kicked his mount into a slow trot. He would pass near the horse and child, who seemed to be heading in the direction of another sod shack on the far side of the long flat.

  Just across a slough.

  It was a fine afternoon. A good country.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Western meadowlark. Lives in open grassland of the western prairie. Has a distinctive flute-like song. Feeds on weed seeds and insects. Nests on the ground in shallow depression lined with soft grass, often weaving together grass to make a waterproof dome over the nest. Gabriella’s Prairie Notes

  Gabby (2012)

  Afternoon sunlight dazzled my eyes.

  The interment ceremony was over. Almost everyone had retreated from the blazing sunshine into the shade of the caragana and box elder windbreak bordering the edge of the cemetery. Part of the crowd that filled the church had remained behind at the hall in town. They would be awaiting the return of the mourners to begin the funeral feast. But the mourners lingered. Eric Tollerud had lived a life dictated by circumstances, by the weather and the seasons. Maybe his family felt that this time, at least, the world could slow and wait for him. There was no need to rush this final goodbye. I think he would have liked them to take their time here, in this place that held so many memories.

  Some stood looking out over the land, possibly admiring the view from this high hilltop, or looking for a familiar landmark. A few strolled among the gravestones, reading the inscriptions. Here is where baby Joy is buried, Per and Abigail Tollerud’s large headstone beside her small one. Over there are the graves of two of his brothers, Gerald and Clare, and his daughter Kathy. Eric’s open grave is beside Catherine’s gray marble headstone. He will not be alone.

  Others gathered in small groups, reconnecting with friends and family.

  “Too bad we need a funeral as an excuse to see each other.”

  The birthday party was to have been held today. I had an
ticipated getting acquainted with the younger members of Eric’s family, his grandchildren, and millennials like me, his great grandchildren. And here we all were, celebrating his life. But the honoured guest had slipped away early.

  Surrounded as the Tolleruds were by a hoard of friends and neighbours, I felt like an outsider. I knew Johanna and Carol and their husbands and several of the nursing staff from Mammoth Pioneer Home. But the rest were all strangers to me.

  Well, not complete strangers. They may not have known anything about me except that I’d pestered their patriarch with questions about his life and written about things which they may have felt I could not possibly understand. But I did know something about each of them, and after hearing their tributes and poems and eulogies, I knew much more about their relationship with Eric. His life might not have been one that would be recorded in history books or immortalized in song, but it was a life that mattered.

  Jo waved to me from across the yard, and I made my way towards her through the open, sunny area. Shading my eyes with my hat, I looked down and away from the sharp afternoon light. The grass crunching beneath my feet was the same prairie grass I was gradually learning to see as distinct and diverse plants. I could even name a few of them. That small orangey flower hugging the ground was Scarlet Mallow. There were clumps of fescue. Thin spikes of Needle and Thread, commonly called spear-grass, grew in clumps. It seemed right that Eric should be interred where these plants lived. They were his old friends. Someday your body and bones will have become part of this prairie. And I will come back here and think of you.

  Jo’s eyes were puffy, but she had done her weeping in private. She smiled at me and said, “Gabby! I hoped I would see you here today.”

  She gave me a quick hug and patted my back, almost as though I were the one bereaved. “I’m going to miss Eric – Mr. Tollerud – your dad,” I stumbled.

  “But we will see you again, won’t we?” she asked. “The Centenarian Project will go on?”

  “Oh, yes” I assured her, “we have another few months of interviews and then we’ll work together to complete our stories. At least a half a dozen from each of the three geographic regions of the province. All to be compiled in a book which will go into every Saskatchewan school and library.”

  “And you will send me a copy?” she asked. “And you will keep in touch? You mentioned another centenarian with roots in this area —?”

  “Yes. Annabelle La Prairie Dubois. Her daughter Madeline called me earlier today. Madeline’s invited me to spend the rest of the month at her cabin and go with her to meet Annabelle. She turns a hundred and two this year.”

  “No time to waste, then,” said Jo briskly. “Maybe that’s the biggest lesson of a long life. Every day matters.”

  She reached into her shoulder bag.

  “I want to give you something. You know, that big party we’d planned for his birthday, before Dad’s stroke changed everything – well, Dad wanted to do something for his family and friends as part of the celebration. One day, when I was visiting him at the Home, he got me to play the piano for him to run-through this song. I taped our practice session. It’s one his Mom sang for him, and he taught it to us when we were kids. I guess every kid in the family knows it by heart.”

  She handed me the flash-drive. “He would want you to have it.”

  As I pulled onto the wide empty road leading back to the highway, I slipped the little stick into the USB port of my car radio. Eric’s broken, quavering voice filled the car. His breathing was ragged, but the words and melody were clear.

  “Now tell me mother meadowlark ...”

  The End

  Joan Soggie’s lifelong curiosity about her homeland has led her to explore the native prairie, the centuries-long relationship between the land and First Nations, and her own family’s settler history. Her 2014 non-fiction book, Looking for Aiktow, garnered praise from academics and general readers.

  “Beautifully told and filled with fascinating stories.” (Rick Book, author of Necking with Louise and Christmas in Canada)

  “The sort of plains history I particularly appreciate.” (Dr. David Meyer, professor emeritus, University of Saskatchewan.)

  The prairie and all its creatures are her inspiration. Her family is her joy. She and her husband, Dennis, enjoy travelling and treasure days with their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Joan Soggie lives and writes in rural Saskatchewan