Bone Coulee

by Larry Warwaruk

  “His dad is buried there. Oh God, Mac. I wish Bill were here with me.” She takes more Kleenex and buries her face in them. Mac gets to his feet, not at all sure how he should respond, and then the dog starts tugging at his pant leg.

  “Oh, for pity’s sake,” Esther says. “Now aren’t we just a pair of hostesses!” She reaches down to gather up and cradle Bridget in her arms. “Don’t mind us, Mac. Two eccentric females who’ve been alone together too long.”

  “The soup?”

  “Oh! Oh the soup! Here. Take Bridget, and I’ll fill the bowls. She wants to make friends with you.”

  “Can I set her down when I eat?”

  “Well of course. Just pet her. She’s not a baby. You don’t have to stand there holding her.”

  They sit across from each other at the kitchen table. Mac breaks soda crackers into his soup, adds salt and pepper and spoons beef and macaroni into his mouth. Esther teases the surface of her soup with her spoon, seemingly more intent on talking than eating.

  “I have some things I want to show you, Mac. From the old days.” She never does eat her soup. Instead, she leaves Mac to finish his while she sorts through boxes on her bedroom closet shelf. Mac eats his last spoonful as she emerges from the bedroom.

  “Remember this doll?”

  “Am I supposed to?”

  “The Casey Shows?”

  “That’s a long time ago, Esther.” Mac takes it from her, a cheap little trinket of a doll they gave out as prizes. He remembers. Why would Esther want to bring the doll out now to show him?

  “Knocking down the milk bottles? Remember?”

  “Abner won it. You and Jen were going to toss a coin to see who could keep it.”

  “I got to keep it, and Jen got to keep Abner. Did you like the soup?”

  “You make the best soup, Esther.”

  “With your package of soup bones.”

  “When Darlene dropped them off, did she think I would make the soup with them?”

  “She thinks you don’t eat right, that you should be eating more home cooking.”

  “I know. She lectures me. She even wrote out the instructions for me to make it. You’d think she was a schoolteacher.”

  “All I can say is that the community needs more women like her. There’s not a committee she’s not on. I don’t know what the fair would do without her. And you know as well as I, the lead she takes on our committee for the cairn. Do you think it will get done in time for the fair?”

  “I hope so. We got the money from Heritage.”

  Esther pours tea into Saskatchewan lily china cups. Mac adds sugar to his and stirs it with a Princess Diana and Prince Charles wedding spoon.

  “Aren’t these just for collections?” Mac asks.

  “Yes,” Esther says. “But why not use them? Otherwise it’s a bit of a waste, don’t you think? Especially with what happened to the royals after.”

  “We still haven’t decided on the exact wording for the plaque,” Mac says.

  “Darlene will know what to put.”

  “I’m sure,” Mac says.

  “What about entertainment for the unveiling?”

  “Mayor Rigley, Pastor Huff, and I’m sure that Abner would put up an official protest if we didn’t ask the NDP candidate. And you could say a few words, Esther.”

  “I mean entertainment, not political speeches.”

  “Any suggestions?”

  “The Amati Strings. Cameron suggested the Amati strings when I told him on the phone about the dedication.”

  “Don’t they play fiddles?”

  “You know better than that.”

  And Mac does know. Quite a few years ago, a pioneer farmer from Kindersley donated his collection to the university. Two violins, a cello and something called a viola. Really old instruments from the sixteenth century.

  “And the university would let them play out in a cow pasture?”

  “I know the family,” Esther says. “One of the daughters in Kindersley is a quilter friend of mine. I could get her to ask for us. Darlene says there is Heritage money available for such events.”

  “Well,” Mac says, setting his empty cup down on the saucer. “Time to go.”

  “What’s the rush?”

  “I’m into a good book,” Mac says. He hopes that she doesn’t ask him for a title.

  “I read a lot too,” she says. “Take the rest of the soup with you. I’ll pour it into an empty sealer.” As she does this, she gazes out her kitchen window.

  “Darlene is taking the art class in Bad Hills?”

  “So Lee tells me.”

  The dog scurries at Esther’s feet, then around and around a leg of the kitchen table.

  “You’d wonder why they chose to move here to Duncan.” Esther says.

  “Good a place as any, and cheap.”

  “I suppose so. You don’t suppose they’d know…?” Esther catches Mac’s eye, but he quickly turns away. What she’s referring to is something they’ve not talked about to each other for a long, long time, if ever they did talk about it. Duncan stays mum about its dark secrets.

  “I don’t mean that Indians shouldn’t be living here in Duncan. But our small towns with their vacant houses are attracting all sorts of weird people from the city. Welfare people. Druggies, like you hear talked about.”

  “The young one’s a teacher. You know that. At the regional college in Bad Hills. The old one is more than likely an old age pensioner just like you and me.”

  “Just the same, you be careful, Mac.” Esther puts the jar of soup into a plastic grocery bag and hands it to him.

  • Chapter 5 •

  You’re sure you’ll be okay here by yourself?” Angela asks. “You won’t leave the house?”

  “Where would I go?” Huh? Where in this stupid town would a lonely old Indian woman go? And Roseanna is lonely. At least in Regina there were people she could talk to. Would she dare go visit the woman across the lane? The other day she had seen her get into Chorniak’s truck, and later she saw Chorniak come out of her house. If she only had nerve enough to try making friends with a fancy white lady. Angela has heard that she sews fancy quilts. Roseanna could show her the star blanket she gave Angela for her fine arts graduation. But she would never dare, even if it would help her figure out something to do about Chorniak.

  “Go,” she tells Angela. “I need a baby sitter? Don’t worry. I have my oxygen tank, and I’m not going to be climbing any hills.”

  After the struggle Roseanna had on the visit to the cemetery, they both realized she had to go on oxygen. She doesn’t like having to wear a tube to her nose, but it is better than not being able to breathe. And it’s not that she has to be tied to it all the time; she can get by without it if she doesn’t have to exert herself.

  “You went all last week to teach your class, and you left me here. So what’s the difference? You’re afraid to be out there alone in case Chorniak catches you?”

  “I let Darlene know. She can tell him. All I want is a few charcoal sketches…the cabin site in the trees, the buffalo jump, tipi rings….”

  “Sounds like all day.”

  “It really shouldn’t take that long….”

  “Go! Go, already. I’m not helpless. I’ve got the television.”

  The television is a poor substitute for the excitement mother and daughter experienced last week on their first visit to the coulee. Roseanna had pointed out things Kokum had told her about from a hundred years ago. To be down there felt like they were living in a different time. As Angela leaves her vehicle and walks into the grove, her feelings of timelessness return.

  A tree branch sways under a raven’s weight, the bird’s beak humped like a Roman nose, the rasp of its call like an old grandfather’s reprimand. Angela sits on the ground with her back to a tree, drawing in her sketchbook. The ash trees are bent and gnarled, like more old grandfathers with crooked arms pointing in different directions. The floor of the grove is a moist carpet of layers and layers of falle
n leaves. The grove is peculiar, something special, because the only other trees are the ones in the draws coming down into the coulee and the countless red willow saplings that grow along the creek bed.

  Angela walks down into the creek bed, nearly dry but for a trickle of water from a hidden spring. The grass is wet and spongy, and there are deer droppings and hoofprints everywhere. She’s overcome with powerful feelings as she realizes where she is standing. Hundreds of buffalo would have fallen right here. Angela digs a large bone out of the gravel. She surmises that at one time this whole area must have been covered with bones, and she shudders to think that her Métis family had to gather and sell bones just to survive. But the Cree people wouldn’t do that. The bones should remain in Mother Earth, which fed the buffalo. Angela puts the bone back into the gravel.

  Angela’s brother is working to acquire Bone Coulee for the Three Crows Cree Nation. Glen told Angela that she should get to know the Chorniaks, that she should be nice to them and that she should suggest how nice it would be to have Bone Coulee designated as an Aboriginal heritage site. But her mother wants more than that. She wants those men to pay for Uncle Thomas. And what price? Money? Land? Life? Glen said to be nice. But he said more than that. He said to sweet-talk Mac Chorniak. “Use the acting skills you learned in your university drama class,” Glen said. “Get him to show you around the coulee to let him know just how much its heritage means to us.”

  But that’s not Mother’s approach. She would shove Mac Chorniak down the buffalo jump if she could. Angela draws a quick sketch of a man’s figure. It falls head first, arms and legs flailing as it hits the ground to smash its head on a rock.

  Across the way, sunlight exposes the tipi rings. Angela hopes to finds things to craft in her class: an odd-shaped stone, a meadowlark, goldfinch, or oriole feather, or a feather from that raven.

  She hears it calling from the grove. It flies up from its branch, only to light on another where it seems bent on scolding something below. At the sight of Angela, an owl hops on the ground at the base of one of the grandfather trees. It flaps one wing and click clicks with its beak. The other wing hangs broken. Angela attempts to pick it up, but it pecks at her hands and beats at her with its healthy wing.

  She can’t just leave the owl helpless, though she imagines that the raven wouldn’t mind. She gets a blanket from the panel truck, spreads it open and covers the owl. She then wraps the bird into a bundle and lays it on the seat of the truck and heads back to town.

  Before she takes it into the house, she carefully rewraps the blanket to have the bird’s head exposed.

  “Look what I have,” she tells her mother, who backs off, her hand shaking her cane so much that she nearly falls down on the floor.

  “Get that death bird out of here!”

  “It has a broken wing.”

  “Don’t you know that owls bring death? I don’t like them. Owls are death!”

  “I can’t just toss it out for cats to eat!”

  “Maybe your friend Darlene will take it. Let it hex the Chorniaks. Phone her, but first get that bird out of this house.”

  “I’ll set it in the porch,” Angela says.

  At the kitchen window with his binoculars, Mac sees Angela take the owl into the house, and he can’t resist his urge to go for a closer look. Besides, it’s only the neighbourly thing to do to welcome newcomers to the community.

  He knocks, and Angela comes to the door.

  “I thought I’d drop over and introduce myself, formally, as a neighbour should. I’m Mac Chorniak. You’ve met Darlene, my daughter-in-law, who’s in your class. And I was just wondering if you might need help with something?” They both look down at the owl where it lies wrapped in a blanket on a bench.

  “It’s got a broken wing,” Angela says. “I was out at your coulee.”

  “Might need a vet to look at it.”

  “There must be one in Bad Hills. I can take it when I go for my class.”

  “I will,” Mac said. “If it’s okay with you. Doc McLochlin is a personal friend of mine. You can bet that Doc McLochlin will fix him up good as new.”

  • Chapter 6 •

  Mac feels that he’s done a good deed, and when Lee comes over the following afternoon he senses that he’s about due to be called upon for another. But his son doesn’t come right out and ask. Instead he tries to get a rise out of him.

  “Darlene tells me you’ve been out running errands for your new neighbours.”

  “You might want to try it,” Mac says as he pulls on the handle of his La-Z-Boy so he can sit upright.

  “Anyway,” Lee says, “Darlene was wondering if you’d care to come out tonight for Garth’s birthday supper.”

  “How old?”

  “He’ll be twenty-five tomorrow. And speaking of tomorrow, have you got anything planned?”

  “Nothing special.”

  “I was wondering if you can work down the Narrow-leaved Hawk’s Beard on the Benson half? I’ve got to get at the lentils up home. Turn the swaths to dry them out. If I don’t, the lentils will mould. Never thought I’d see the day we’d have too much rain.”

  “You want me to run your new outfit?”

  “I started this morning. Made two rounds, then hit a rock and busted the frame on the cultivator. Had to bring it home to weld. When you come out later this afternoon I’ll show you the controls. They’re a bit complicated, but I’ll write out the instructions for you.”

  When Mac got married, with his father’s help, he bought the Harrington farm where Lee and Darlene now live. Tall elms line each side of the lane all the way up to the barn. And what a barn! One thing the Englishmen did was build barns. This one still stands up straight and tall as the day it was built.

  It seems that old Harrington must have designed the yard to suit the barn. The tree-lined lane leads to a ramp right up to the broad doors, at one time the entry for a team of horses to pull a hayrack into the loft.

  Three vents on the hip roof rise like steeples on a church, each one topped with a black horse weather vane. Proud, is what you’d call this barn, from a proud time. Proud, like Mac’s first tractor, his John Deere D, stored in one of the empty stalls. He restored it himself, and he takes it out every fall to drive in the Duncan Harvest Fair parade. These old tractors are more like icons now, things to be polished up and worshipped.

  Mac has made sure to arrive early enough for his lesson on operating the 9420 John Deere. Lee’s at the fuel tanks, loading the tractor up with two hundred gallons of diesel. Mac’s old D takes thirty.

  “I’ll finish this,” Lee says. “Then I’ll have you drive it over to the shed to hook on to the cultivator. See how you make out. Just climbing up into the cab might be chore enough for you.”

  “You want me to work that field tomorrow or not?” Mac says, grinning. He’s used to his son’s Irish wit, inherited from his mother. He’s got the height and lean features of his mother too. Peggy used to dress like a cowboy movie queen, like Dale Evans. And here’s Lee: cowboy boots, blue jeans, silver buckle as big and round as a saucer, plaid shirt, handkerchief around his neck, black hat on his balding head. Not even fifty, and he’s got much less hair than his father. Less hair and more stress, when you have to pay a quarter of a million dollars for a tractor.

  Just as Lee hangs up the storage tank hose, a semi drives up the lane with its air horn blasting.

  “Looks like Garth’s made it home,” Lee says.

  He’s the real cowboy, and he drives his truck as if he’s mounted on a quarter-horse stallion.

  “Hi there, Gramps!” he says, bounding out of the truck and waving his hat.

  “We’ll hook on later,” Lee says. “Let’s go up to the house and clean up for supper.”

  Darlene keeps a spotless house, much as Peggy did. She meets them outside at the porch steps.

  “Boots off!”

  Just like Peggy, Mac’s Irish washerwoman. Darlene is forever offering to come in to clean his house and wash his clothes,
as if Peggy left her with those instructions. Maybe she did. In her white denim jeans and red silk shirt, the mother’s dressed for her son’s birthday. She doesn’t miss a trick, right down to the silver buckle at her waist.

  Garth automatically sets his boots on the boot rack, and hangs his hat beside his dad’s, on the antlers of the deer head mounted above the kitchen entry. Unlike his father, Garth has a full head of coal-black hair, and a hang-down moustache that he must be fertilizing to make it grow. A lump of chewing tobacco shows in his cheek.

  “What’s for supper, Mom?”

  “Go wash your hands, and get rid of that wad in your mouth.”

  “After supper Dad’s driving the outfit to the Benson land,” Lee says. “He needs the practice. So you won’t have to go, Darlene. I can bring him back.”

  “Not only practice,” Darlene says. “He needs a haircut, too. Can I give you a trim tonight, Grandpa?”

  “The price is right,” Mac says.

  One thing about Darlene, she knows how to command. People fall in line before they know what’s happening, and then they don’t mind because she’s already got everything done up to perfection. Just like this birthday supper. She’s set the table with Peggy’s Wedgewood china with its tureen filled with wild-rice soup, and the platter covered with Chorniak Farms Black Angus T-bone steaks, barbecued medium rare, and one for Mac that’s well done. She’s baked a carrot cake with cream-cheese icing, decorated with a circle of twenty-five candles, and in the centre she’s stuck a chocolate rodeo bull and rider.

  “Let’s at it!” Garth says. “What do you say, Grandpa?”

  “Happy birthday.”

  “Quick on the draw,” Garth says. “What’s in this soup, Mom?”

  “Wild rice. But keep your hands off. We’ll say grace first. Lee? Can you?”

  “You can stay seated, Dad,” Lee says. “Let’s just bow our heads. Thank you, Lord, for the good food Darlene’s prepared for us tonight, for having Grandpa here with us, and for having our son here at home for his birthday. Thank you for everything. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Mac says.

  At sun-up in the morning Mac is at the field. He gets out of his truck, then walks over to the tractor. With his farming background, he knows not to start the engine without checking the oil. It’s a good thing that they still put the dipstick where a person can reach it. The new John Deere has tires that are higher than Mac’s head. What if he had to add oil to the engine? He’d need a twenty-foot ladder.