Bone Coulee

by Larry Warwaruk

  “You think so. After all this time.”

  “So it might take a little more time.”

  “Oh.”

  Roseanna doesn’t like how Angela says oh. She makes it sound as if her mother doesn’t know what she is talking about. Does her daughter even care? She is more interested in her new job. Leave everything to Glen, she thinks. It was Glen who told her about the job. Glen even found out how cheap it was to rent a house in Duncan. He had been to the real-estate office in Bad Hills, and had found out about land available near Duncan. He even saw the coulee place that Kokum used to tell of in her stories. “Good willow there for your baskets,” he told Angela. Glen likes to make fun of her education. He calls it BBW, bachelor of basket weaving. A Dakota artist from Minnesota did come to Regina to teach at the First Nations University. He did show Angela how to make things with willow. But that is not all she learned. Among other things, she learned smudging, and the many things to know about the Four Directions. Important things Roseanna missed out on wasting her time in residential school.

  • Chapter 3 •

  Mac shouldn’t let it bother him; God knows, the village of Duncan can always use a few more people moving in, even if it’s only a couple of Indian women. It can’t do him any harm, other than stir up a dark memory he’s spent a good part of a lifetime trying to forget. He finds solace in his basement. He retreats there with his book of Taras Shevchenko poems, dusted off from his student days at the Mohyla Institute. Now, in his old age, the poems are taking on meaning that he didn’t have the time for in his youth.

  Before his wife Peggy died the rumpus room spelled merriment with its parties on New Year’s Eve; and they watched the Grey Cup on television, having the Holts and Rawlings over to watch it with them. That was all before Peggy’s cancer. When they built the new house, the rumpus room had smelled crisp and clean, not musty.

  But an old man like Mac just lets things slide into decay. When Peggy was around the basement walls had no mould. Did she wipe them down with Javex? He never paid attention. It wouldn’t hurt to try Javex. On the bar counter are tomatoes his daughter-in-law brought him from the farm. Some are spoiling. It’s a good thing he didn’t set them out to ripen on the pool table.

  Mac sinks down into the orange-and-purple-patterned sofa chair; the one Peggy made him haul down the stairs when they bought the new set on one of her birthdays. He opens his book to the poem, When I was Thirteen:

  …I bowed my head and wept

  Such bitter tears…. And then a lass

  Who had been sorting hemp

  Not far from there, down by the path,

  Heard my lament and came

  Across the field to comfort me;

  She spoke a soothing phrase

  And gently dried my weeping eyes

  And kissed my tear-wet face…

  It was as though the sun had smiled,

  As though all things on earth were mine,

  My own…the orchards, fields, and groves….

  Mac is a collector. When he was a boy he collected birds’ eggs, penny match covers, baseball cards, and he started collecting coins.

  “I married a collector of British royalty,” Peggy said with a scowl when she saw his complete set of Queen Victoria Canadian quarters. “Yuk!” his pretty nurse from Dublin said. “You’ve not heard of the Troubles? And the bloody drummin’ Orangemen?”

  Mac misses her fire, but more than that; she filled up his life. She made him feel that he was worthwhile. And when he told her about his past (and he had thought long and hard about whether or not he should) she took his hand in both of hers and squeezed, and then she kissed him. She said to get on with life. She said that in Ireland, in the north, there’s not a week goes by that somebody doesn’t get bumped off, but people keep on living all the same. She said that’s what Jesus died on the cross for. He paid for everybody’s mean streak that each one of us has now and then, and in Ireland the men would do themselves good to stay off the liquor, and she kissed him again. Ukrainians too, Mac thinks.

  He misses his farming years, the productive time of his tie to the soil. Bone Coulee is Mac’s pride, his Century Farm. He is a third-generation Saskatchewan dirt farmer, a grandson of immigrants. His grandmother brought with her a jar of rich black humus that Ukrainian farmers called chernozem. She packed the jar in the trunk her father had made to give her at her wedding. The trunk is still out at the farm, up in the barn loft.

  Mac’s grandfather walked many miles probing the ground for chernozem. But when he came upon Bone Coulee, and the buffalo bones, he wanted this quarter section. In Moose Jaw he had seen piles of these bones being loaded onto railway cars. Somebody was buying them.

  Glass-covered cases of arrowheads hang from his rumpus room walls. In the dirty thirties he walked with his father in blown-out fields to gather arrowheads. Today he finds them along the shores of Lake Diefenbaker and along the dry creek bed of Bone Coulee.

  The coulee is a storehouse of artifacts, and Mac heads a committee that raises money to have a cairn built in honour of what the locals call “The Buffalo Bone Trail.” The committee’s mostly himself, his daughter-in-law and Esther Rawling. His friends toss an odd quarter or two into the coffee-row collection can. Through all the years, these old baseball buddies haven’t strayed from Duncan, and Mac sees them every morning.

  “Anything more on the cairn project?” Nick asks.

  “Cheque in the mail this morning,” Mac says. “Courtesy of Saskatchewan Heritage, along with a thank-you letter to the committee.”

  “You might get it erected in time for the fair after all,” Nick says. “An election year does wonders when it comes to dishing out money.”

  “No problem getting speakers for the dedication,” Pete says.

  The new Duncan café was built with donations of money and labour and leased for a dollar to Kwok Ming and Tung Yee, a couple from Hong Kong. Enlarged photos hang on the wall: pictures of a threshing machine, steam engine, draft horses, wheat sheaves…taken at last fall’s Heritage Day threshing demonstration.

  “More coffee?” Tung Yee flits around the table like a butterfly, coffee pot in one hand, coffee can jangling coins in the other. “Twenty-five cents for refill. All money for donation to Mac’s buffalo trail tower.”

  “A plaque, Tung Yee. A stonemason is going to build a cairn, and we’re getting a bronze plaque engraved.”

  “Sure, Mac. Twenty-five cents for refill.”

  “Here’s for all of them,” Mac says, and he drops a toonie into the can.

  “Petrushka!” Nick says. “Get your nose out from behind your newspaper. You can’t see and you can’t hear. Tung Yee’s asking if you want a refill.”

  “Look at this,” Jeepers says. “Mac’s name right on the front page!”

  “What’s it say?” Sid asks.

  “It’s about the all-candidates debate we went to last Tuesday in Bad Hills. NDP John Popoff, and Sask Party Eddy Huff. The reporter interviewed Mac. Don’t you remember?” Jeepers holds the paper up and points to the story.

  “The Eagle quotes Mac: ‘The debate? Just a lot of hot air. Mostly huffing and puffing.’ That’s exactly what Mac said.”

  “Anybody know this John Popoff?” Sid asks.

  “Farms in the Dirt Hills south of Fiske,” Pete says. “Organic farmer…grows mostly weeds. And he raises free-range pigs. Last week they were feeding off his neighbour’s chickpeas. I don’t know how he can market those pigs as organic, with all the spraying they do on chickpeas.”

  Jeepers rubs his glass eye with the back of his hand. “Ahh,” he mumbles. The eye drips. He’s a squat little man, red faced and stout from eating too many perogies. His eyes bulge and his cheeks wobble as he shakes his head. “Ahh, ahh,” and his head lowers and he bends, as if looking for something under the table, then folds his newspaper to fit in his jacket pocket. He lifts his head and smiles, aware of the attention he’s attracting from the faces around the table.

  “You’ll see the ND
P candidate when Abner brings him around.”

  “There are rumours that Abner sold his land to the Indians,” Sid says. “Heard anything, Mac?”

  “Abner did mention something.”

  Mac doesn’t say anything more. He’s worried about his own quarter section. His Bone Coulee. He’s kept this piece of land in his own name; it’s the site of the original Chorniak homestead. But it’s not just that. Bone Coulee is a buffalo jump, a slaughtering ground prehistoric Indians used before they had horses to ride to chase the buffalo down. There are tipi rings all over the floor of the coulee. He wants to preserve it himself. The quarter section is his last piece of land, the one fact that still classes him as a farmer, and a holder of a Wheat board permit book.

  “You going to sell?” Nick asks.

  “And wouldn’t you like to know.”

  All Mac has left in his name is fifty acres cultivated and the rest of the quarter section in prairie grass. With some farmland still in his name, he gets the cheaper rates on farm plates for his truck. He took some new swather parts to the farm yesterday, and while he was there he fuelled his truck. His son told him that the government’s changed the rules. He said a farm has to gross $10,000 in order to qualify for tax-exempt gasoline.

  “The government doesn’t have to know,” he told Lee.

  “How much wheat did I seed at the coulee?” Lee asked. “Fifty acres? You can’t hold a permit book on fifty acres.”

  “Fifty, or five thousand,” Mac said. “The Wheat Board represents us all.”

  “And that’s the trouble.”

  It sure is, Mac thinks. One generation to the next. Men organize to work together and form the wheat pool, and their sons tear it down. The next generation of Indians may as well turn it all back to the buffalo.

  “Well, Mac?” Sid says. “Didn’t Abner say that some Glen guy from the Three Crows Nation was looking to buy his farm?”

  “With our money,” Jeepers says.

  “Get rid of the NDP in Regina,” Pete says. “With Harper in Ottawa, things’ll change.”

  Nick leans forward, head to head with Mac. “You sure they haven’t been after you to sell? You know, the buffalo jump? That’s right up their alley when it comes to heritage.”

  “Seen that Indian girl moved in next door to you?” Pete asks.

  “Which one?” Mac says.

  “The young one’s an artist,” Sid says.

  As if Sid would know anything about art. But as Duncan's mayor, he's attended meetings with the regional development officer in Bad Hills.

  “She teaches art," Sid says. "At the regional college. They’re offering a course on making baskets out of willow.”

  “I wonder what they’re up to, moving into Duncan?” Pete says.

  “The Indians can buy my place,” Jeepers says.

  “I wonder what they’ll do with Abner’s land?” Nick says.

  “Rent it out,” Pete says. “Do you ever see them do the work themselves?” He hunches over, a big man, broad across the shoulders, bushy eyebrows, thick fingers gripped to his coffee cup. “They’re taking over the whole country, and they don’t pay taxes. The municipality will be out whatever Abner has been paying for property tax. Then who’s going to build the roads?”

  “I should have been a lawyer,” Jeepers says. “They make all the money.”

  “More coffee?” Tung Yee says. She fills Mac’s cup. “Out to your Indian place this morning?”

  “Going this afternoon,” Mac says.

  “Anyone else want fill?”

  The front door opens and Abner shuffles in with a stranger, a short man, rather heavy-set, and with a well-scrubbed look about him.

  “Duncan’s last breathing socialist,” Nick whispers. “And another one with him.”

  The men at the table don’t change their postures, other than to straighten up just a little. They don’t gawk or change their expressions. Their faces don’t show any hint of a softening up, nor of a hardening, though their necks might have stiffened just a little at the sight of Abner. It’s not something new that they’re seeing. Abner has escorted socialist candidates during elections for the last half century.

  “I’m John Popoff,” the candidate says. “Running for the NDP.” He circles the table, stops in front of Nick and holds out his hand. “John Popoff.”

  Nick backs away from the table and stands up.

  “Nick Belak. Pleased to meet you. I don’t need to shake Abner’s hand. It shakes enough already.”

  “John farms at Fiske,” Abner says, with both his hands clutched to the back of an empty chair. He is bothered with Parkinson’s disease, and it really shows when he’s nervous.

  Sid stands up and introduces himself, one politician to another, though he’d likely be a lot more at ease with the other candidate. Jeepers wipes his hands with a napkin and rises to his feet. No one’s at all certain where his vote lies, though Mac suspects that he might even be a closet socialist.

  Pete remains seated.

  “John has his diploma from the school of agriculture,” Abner says.

  “Organic farmer?” Nick asks. “They’re teaching that at the university?”

  “Not when the chemical companies fund the research,” Abner butts in. “What did Tommy Douglas say? ‘He who pays the piper call the tune?’”

  As much as he is tolerated by his coffee-row cohorts, even loved because of their lifelong friendships, his politics is something else. They mark Abner in the camp of organic, NDP, anti-nuke, pro- choice, supporter of gun-registration, vegetarianism, gay marriage, communism, and to some extent anything that reeks of anything government, anything beyond the municipal level, seeing that the Sask Party has been careful to choose its candidates from the rural culture.

  Pete looks at his watch. “Almost noon,” he says. “The wife will have soup on.”

  “Yeah, and I should be going,” Jeepers says. “Pleased to meet you, Johnny.” Sid follows them out.

  “Enough coffee for me,” Nick tells Tung Yee, and he covers his cup with his hand. Abner holds his cup out, and his hand shakes. “A cup for Johnny, too,” he says, his head shaking with a bounce not in rhythm with his coffee cup.

  “Abner taking you around this afternoon?” Mac asks Johnny.

  “No, I’m heading back to Fiske. Spending the afternoon in Bad Hills.”

  “Jen’s making him lunch,” Abner says.

  “After lunch, do you want to drive out to Bone Coulee with me, Abner?”

  “I could.”

  “Gotta find the right spot for the cairn, so I can tell the stonemason. It has to be finished in time for the fair.”

  “You go to that Indian place?” Tung Yee asks.

  “Why do you keep saying that? ‘Indian place’?”

  “Place for bones. Indian tents. Wagon ruts.” She picks up the coffee can and shakes it. “Place for your tower.”

  “I suppose it is an Indian place,” Mac says. With the NDP candidate sitting across the table, Mac wonders if he has heard any gossip about what happened in Duncan fifty-seven years ago. He’s no doubt after the Indian vote and would likely want to see Bone Coulee declared a heritage site. That might not even be a bad idea if it would lighten Mac’s guilt.

  What happened still tugs at him like a rope around his neck. Who even cared about Indians back then? They certainly wouldn’t have been hiring an Indian to teach art courses in Bad Hills. Back then it was a time of growth on the family farms. Farmyards were filled with young families crowding the one-room country schools. Now there’s talk of closing the school in Duncan because there are no kids. Duncan still has a fair, but it’s in the fall. It’s not the big baseball tournament, harness racing, Casey Shows midway on the fourth Saturday in June, like it was in 1950, a date that Mac would rather forget.

  After lunch, Abner joins Mac on the drive out to Bone Coulee. Mac appreciates the company, though it’s not a matter of a favour either way. They have kind of grown on each other over time. They know what to expect f
rom one another. Each thinks in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way that the other is a fool, which somehow seems to strengthen the bond between them.

  “Ever see so many geese? Abner says. The fields are covered with snows and Canadas; thousands and thousands of geese. “It used to be ducks when we were young, and now it’s geese. What makes the change?”

  Mac wonders whether the same can be said for farming. The land’s the same land. Same air, same sun, same water, but the farming’s not the same. It’s getting so big that it doesn’t seem natural. Just as all these geese don’t seem natural.

  Sitting upright and slightly forward on the seat, with the bounce of Mac’s truck on the washboard road, Abner takes on the appearance of a goose. He’s got a long and skinny neck, and his head twitches. All Mac has to do is praise the Sask Party, and Abner could flap and hiss and spit, and you’d swear he was a goose. He sits up straighter yet when they come by his farm.

  “Look at that!” A cow moose and its calf nibble on the overgrown lilac bushes that line the driveway leading into the old Holt farmyard. Mac turns in and shuts off the motor. The cow moose glances their way, nips off another lilac branch, then ambles further up the lane with her calf.

  “I should have my twenty-two,” Mac says.

  “You wouldn’t shoot them, would you?”

  “Not with a twenty-two, and not without a licence. But there are gophers out at the old place. More than ever, now that you can’t use strychnine. Remember back in school when we used to get two cents a tail?”

  “Did you register the rifle?”

  “The twenty-two? Just one more money grab.”

  “Don’t know if anyone’s ever been charged anyway,” Abner says.

  Another mile and they are parked at the top of the buffalo jump. They can see across the coulee to the remains of the Chorniak homestead…poplar trees growing out of the cellar hole, pieces of the barn foundation, the chicken coop with its caved-in roof. They can see the outline of the trail leading from the floor of the coulee, up past the homestead and up the rest of the way out of the coulee.