Bone Coulee

by Larry Warwaruk

  “Grandpa says that the world’s first trick riders were Ukrainian Cossacks. At last year’s rodeo a cowboy did The Cossack Drag. With one foot in the stirrup, the cowboy hung upside down along the horse’s side, so that his hands could touch the ground.”

  “You’ve tried it?”

  “Not yet. You think I want to kill myself? Grandpa says that a Cossack could pluck a kerchief off the ground with his teeth.”

  “Speaking of teeth,” Angela says, “do you think maybe we should eat our bagels?”

  Angela cuts hers in half, and then spreads cheese on each piece. Before she’s done that, Garth has eaten his.

  “So your brother really did ride bulls?”

  “Hmm…” She nods, then wipes her mouth with a napkin.

  “You’re gonna have to come and watch me.”

  “We’ll see. I have a sick mother to care for.” She slides her plate towards Garth.

  “Half was enough for me,” she says.

  “I’ll eat it on the way,” he says. “I’m hauling a B-train of malt barley to Biggar.”

  “I can follow you,” Angela says. “I’m going to Bad Hills.”

  Along the highway from Duncan to Bad Hills the land is flat and treeless, but on the distant south horizon gentle hills rise. Angela tries to imagine the look of the flat stubble fields when they were prairie grass and the buffalo grazed. She imagines how it must have been in the summer, with no shelter from the hot sun, and in the winter when buffalo faced a blizzard.

  Halfway to Bad Hills she sees a buffalo herd, and she can’t help but think how at home these animals are, with their thick mats of fur on their massive shoulders, and how their twitching noses seem tuned to the wind.

  The college in Bad Hills takes up part of the space in the old high school. To get there, Angela drives by the new high school. With its red roof and pagoda style, the building reminds her of a Pizza Hut. The student parking lot is filled with shiny new cars and half-ton trucks with chrome stacks up the back and oversized tires.

  The old school is a box-like structure with the windows on the ground floor boarded over. A newly painted Prairie West Regional College sign hangs above the walk-up entry. Angela walks up the steps, opens a metal door to the building, then climbs a flight of stairs to the administration office.

  “The deep-freeze is coming this morning?” Angela asks Susan at the front desk.

  “Didn’t Mr. Huff say that he was bringing it around this morning when he comes to talk to the students?” Susan asks Brenda, the Co-ordinator II at her desk at the back of the room.

  “In the box of his campaign truck, ”Brenda says. “At 11 o’clock.”

  “Thanks so much,” Angela says. “I’ve kept the willow frozen at home, but we’ll need lots of it here, and I can’t let it dry out.”

  “It took a bit to explain the need for a deep-freeze to my boss,” Brenda says. “Have you got the canes with you? I told Mr. Huff to back around to the shop entry. The welding class can carry it in.”

  Darlene comes running up the stairs.

  “We’ve got your freezer, Angela, and it’s already unloaded. Would you like to meet our next MLA?”

  Pastor Eddy takes the stairs two steps at a time and enters the office with his right hand extended.

  “This is Angela Wilkie,” Darlene says.

  “And I’m Eddy Huff,” he says. “Darlene’s been telling me about you.”

  He doesn’t look like a politician, or a preacher. He wears cowboy boots, jeans, belt buckle, polka-dot neck scarf and hat.

  “Don’t mind my outfit,” he says. “Darlene’s idea. She’s made me into a walking advertisement for the Bone Coulee Rodeo.”

  “In today’s world, image is everything,” Darlene says.

  • Chapter 13 •

  Roseanna sits on her walker parked by the owl cage. When her daughter told her about making friends with the Chorniak grandson, she thought it might not be a bad idea, just like getting to know Jen Holt is not a bad idea. But Roseanna doesn’t know about the sister. This Esther Rawling woman talked Angela into being a judge for their fair, and she wants them over for tea this afternoon to see her quilts. Angela says she is a real busybody, like her puppy. It yaps at blackbirds roosting in the maple trees, and it yapped at Roseanna when she went with her walker up the lane. Angela says a pet gets to be like its owner, and she teases Roseanna that she’s spending too much time with the owl.

  “Sly bird,” Roseanna says to it. “What all do you know?” They stare at each other. Roseanna rattles the chicken wire with a stick, then makes sounds by clicking her tongue. After a moment, the owl clicks its beak.

  “I have a plan,” Roseanna says. “Angela, what are you doing this morning?”

  “Some drawings of the town. Mrs. Rawling asked me if I’d show some pieces at the fair.”

  “Draw the camp,” Roseanna says. “Where I found my broken doll.”

  She returns her gaze back to concentrate on the owl.

  “An owl flew over us that night at the camp. Draw a picture. Let the spirits guide you.”

  This morning Angela wants to draw the grain elevator before it gets knocked down, and if she finishes in time, she’ll go to the campsite.

  Angela imagines the empty elevator as near death. Later she will draw another picture during the elevator’s scheduled collapse, and later still another of an empty lot with a few half-buried boards showing on the surface.

  The grain-boss elevator stands astride the plain, its business gone. Grass grows on its ramps like fuzz on carpet slippers. Workers swarm like ants on its thick ankles, emptying the building of what valuables can be removed. She draws the elevator’s resigned apprehension in the eyes of its broken windows, and in its slouched sag of submission.

  She moves up the street to get a line on empty lots, the surviving post office, the vacant pool hall and the café. If she can locate old photographs, she’d like to draw a picture of the street in busier times, and another before there was a street.

  From there she goes to the fairgrounds. Her mother told her that the campsite is to the northeast of the racetrack that no longer exists: no track, no judge’s stand, no white rail fence. But she sees the aspen bluff, and that is just what she is looking for.

  She finds the clearing, but no evidence of anything left over from a camp, just the few rusted cans. How could there be anything after fifty-seven years? She will sketch regardless: the trees, the grassy area, the slough filled with cattails.

  She draws two tents and a wagon stacked with willow pickets, and another picture of moving camp in a time before wheels – a picture of horses pulling travois. But she’d better hurry; she told Mrs. Rawling they’d come for tea at one.

  Esther’s quilt is stretched out on a frame in the living room. Finished quilts are draped on sofas and chairs, and on the dining room table. Angela stands beside her, and Roseanna sits on a chair with the dog on her lap.

  Esther scurries about the room from one quilt to the next, holding each one upright to show its pattern and name it:

  “Log Cabin, The Cross and Crown,

  Stacked Bricks, Trip Around the World,

  Shoo Fly, Star, Rail Fence,

  Court House Steps, Mohawk Trail,

  Dresden Plate, Grandmother’s Flower Garden….

  She lifts a quilt hanging from the back of her rocking chair. Each square has four different-coloured triangles sewn together, each square bordered with four-inch strips of floral Fortrel, polka-dot Fortrel and any and all of the patterns of the age of Fortrel.

  My old blouses,” she says, “and my late husband’s pants and shirts.”

  “What is the pattern called?” Angela asks.

  Esther’s lips twitch for a moment. “I shouldn’t say. It’s really quite silly when you think of it.” She holds it by the corner, gingerly in one hand, and gingerly with her other hand strokes it with her fingers, then folds the quilt to place it back on her chair.

  “Indian Hatchet,” she says. “Isn�
��t that silly?”

  Angela picks it up and laughs. “I don’t see any hatchets.”

  “Neither do I,” Esther says. “I don’t know why it’s called that.”

  “Angela has a star-blanket quilt from her graduation,” Roseanna says.

  “Bring it with you, Angela. When you come to the hall on Friday. We can set it up for display.”

  She pours tea from a Saskatchewan lily fine-china teapot into Saskatchewan Lily fine-china cups. When she takes the lid off a cookie jar, the dog yips and leaps from Roseanna’s lap, only to get tangled in her oxygen lines.

  “Oh, Bridget,” Esther says as she untangles the dog. “You naughty girl.” She cradles the dog in her arms, then sets her down on her mat by her dish and gives her a cookie.

  “You’ll bring some drawings to the fair?” Esther asks Angela.

  “I think, a couple.”

  “We start judging at eight o’clock.”

  They finish with the tea, and then Esther calls on Angela to help with her quilt.

  “And you can just sit and watch us, Mrs. Wilkie. That we don’t do anything wrong.”

  “Babysit the dog,” Roseanna says, as by this time Bridget has jumped back on her lap.

  “This design is different,” Esther says, “and how it’s made.” She tells how normally she would have sewn patches into squares, and then sewn the squares together to make a cover. For this quilt, she has sewn forty-eight patches into a large ring, and she has many rings. She then stitched all the rings, like Olympic rings, onto a cream-coloured cotton cover. Angela rubs the fabric with her fingers to feel its warm, satin touch.

  “Sea Island cotton,” Esther says. “I’ve had it awhile. From Mikado Silk in Saskatoon. Mostly nowadays people use a cotton/polyester. But nothing compares to Sea Island cotton.”

  Esther has two pieces of cardboard for stencils: a circle the size of a dollar, and a concave square that’s a little larger. She has already stitched on the rings, and she has stitched all the patterns inside the circles, except for the last one where she has to trace both stencils in its centre.

  “The frame’s old,” Angela says. “Old wood.”

  “My grandparents,” Esther says. “They had it when they came from Ontario. They even brought a piano.”

  “Your quilts are beautiful. What’s this one called?”

  “Wedding Ring,” Esther says.

  “Not Indian Hatchet,” Roseanna says.

  • Chapter 14 •

  Angela’s at the hall Friday morning judging exhibits and she’s at it all day, writing on tags with felt markers: first, second or third prize. Pinning on ribbons. Darlene’s there, assisting a man and lady from the provincial association. They judge the bread and pastries, garden and farm produce, from pumpkins to red lentils. Esther judges the quilts and knitted sweaters. Esther has thanked Angela three or four times, saying how important it is to get the young people involved.

  “Mrs. Rawling showed us her quilting frame,” Angela tells Darlene. “It’s a real antique. From Boston, before the American Revolution.”

  “A relic like me,” Esther says. “But it’s time for tea and cinnamon buns.”

  “You should have these entered,” Darlene says.

  “They’re not mine. Jen sent them. She’d be here this morning, but she’s trying to get rid of a cold. Jen and I are riding on the Buffalo Hollow Homemakers float, and she’d never want to miss that. Better we eat these buns before the people from the Association get back from the café.”

  “There are plenty,” Darlene says.

  “Isn’t it just wonderful to have Angela here?” Esther says. “We need youth. To carry on the heritage. I hear that you are doing something about saving the old pool hall, Darlene.”

  “Yes, for a boutique.”

  “Will there be enough business?”

  “Rural Development thinks so. There’s a grant. Angela’s come at exactly the right time. We could sell her work in the boutique: baskets, dream catchers…”

  “You think so?” Angela asks.

  “And it won’t cost you a cent. We could even hold your classes in the boutique. All I need is your signature on a grant application.”

  “My signature?”

  “The REDA grant. With your signature, it’s as good as a guarantee that we’ll get it. Don’t you think Angela and I would make a great team, Esther?”

  “I’m sure,” Esther says, and she takes a sip of tea.

  Angela wakes to the sound of a siren. At first she thinks there must be a fire somewhere. She hurries out of bed to join her mother, who’s already at the front room window. It’s a fire truck. Sid Rigley drives, holding a megaphone out the side window.

  “Get out of bed, Esther! Pancake breakfast in the Lion’s Den beer gardens.”

  “He wakes up the town?” Roseanna says.

  The siren sounds a second time.

  “How about you people?” Sid’s voice blares from the megaphone. “Pancake breakfast! Sausage! Eggs! Hash browns! We’ve even got Kwok Ming at the grill.”

  “Should we go?” Angela asks.

  “I had my bannock and jam,” says Roseanna.

  “I’ll leave you then. I promised Mrs. Rawling I would go to the hall to help with the exhibits.”

  “The campsite pictures. Make sure you take them, even if you didn’t draw Thomas’s death.”

  “I took them yesterday.” She had thought about taking her star blanket, but then decided not to; she didn’t want it to look as if it was in a competition. With Sid Rigley’s megaphone still blaring up and down the streets of Duncan, Angela walks to the village hall. Esther and Darlene are the only ones there, but moments later Jane arrives. She tells them that in the afternoon they’ll be filming the cairn dedication, but this morning she wants to see the exhibits. It’s then that she notices Esther’s quilt.

  “What is it?” Esther asks.

  “This quilt. I had one just like it.” She strokes the fabric, then picks it up and holds it to her cheek. “Quilts go back a long way in my family. I don’t know how far back. I’ve inherited the Smythe family’s quilting frame. I had the Wedding Ring quilt that my great-grandmother made, until the mice got into the cottage last winter. I suppose you wouldn’t sell this one?”

  “It’s for my son,” Esther says. “You’ll just have to get busy and make yourself one. That would please great-grandmother.”

  “If I knew how. But I’m more of a historian of quilting. When I inherited the Wedding Ring, I researched the history of the pattern, and that got me onto others. Quilt patterns are my hobby.”

  “Before you leave,” Esther says, “we’ll have to have a good chinwag about quilts.”

  Jane walks along the rows of tables, stopping now and then to test the weight of a beet, a turnip, a pumpkin; to smell a bouquet of asters. She stops to examine the paintings and drawings.

  “Can I see what you have?” she asks Angela.

  “Two,” Angela says.

  “Your elevator is very human,” Jane says. “And very vulnerable. It knows that it is doomed. You put a lot of passion into your work, Angela.”

  “I try.”

  “And it seems to breathe with life….”

  “Life and death,” Angela says.

  Jane studies the second picture for a long time without saying anything. Finally, she sets it down, and seemingly without realizing, lays the elevator picture on top of it.

  “Your tents have eyes,” she says.

  “Yoo hoo!” Esther says. “I’m going to leave you ladies now. I have to iron my pioneer dress for the parade. Watch for us, Jane. The Buffalo Hollow Homemakers’ float. You’ll never guess what our theme is for this year.”

  The floats congregate in the schoolyard, some of them passing Angela and her mother’s house on their way. The parade has been assembling for more than an hour: trucks, cars, tractors…, horses pulling floats. Children ride bicycles, tricycles and battery-driven cars and trucks. A fire engine from Bad Hills drives by; and a N
ew Holland, and a John Deere combine, each as wide as the street. Sid Rigley is back on Duncan’s yellow fire truck, his voice blaring, “Okay. Take your horses where the others are, over by the flagpole. We’re almost ready to start.”

  Angela has invited Darlene and Jane to watch the parade from her front yard. Roseanna is outside with them, seated on her walker. Others are seated in lawn chairs up and down the sidewalk and across the street.

  “Okay,” Sid’s voice booms. “We’re ready to go! And just a reminder. Two o’clock at Bone Coulee! The Amati Strings!”

  Two marching red-coated Mounties lead the parade. The clowns follow behind. One of the clowns carries a plastic trumpet. Another, a tuba. A third, a kettle drum. Two other clowns wave ballooned hands. A police car behind the clowns is all siren sounds and red and blue flashing lights. The community band rides on a float. Nick Belak marches with two other men from the Bad Hills chapter of the Knights of Columbus. They wear black hats with brims up on the sides, tails of white fur, and black suits with red-lined capes. Each knight holds a sword upright.

  John Popoff drives the Green Car plastered with NDP signs. The horses appear. Four teams of black Percherons, their gaits majestic, their harnesses adorned with silver bells and their hames topped with red plumes, pull wagons. One horse farts and lets go with its droppings plop, plop, plop on the road. A team of Shetlands pulls a tiny wagon. Twenty or more men, women and children from the Bad Hills Riding Club ride their horses.

  “There’s Garth!” Darlene says. He drives his Sport Fury convertible, its hood draped with the Sask Party banner and candidate Eddy Huff waving to the crowd from the back seat.

  Angela hears the putt, putt, putt of Mac Chorniak’s John Deere D, pulling the float of the Buffalo Hollow Homemakers’ Club. Esther Rawling and Jen Holt sit in rocking chairs. They wear long dresses with bonnets made from the same material.

  “Yoo hoo!” Esther shouts, and she waves until Jane waves back.