Bone Coulee

by Larry Warwaruk

  “It’s our right to hunt,” Glen says.

  Pete yells from outside the circle of blinding half-ton headlights. “Your right to hunt with a spotlight at midnight, like your kind does?”

  “You treaty Indian?” the policeman asks. “Or Métis?”

  “We have an issue,” Jane Smythe-Crothers says. “One week before the election. In an abandoned Saskatchewan farmyard, First Nations hunters are apprehended for shooting a moose without a licence, at night, in an area of the province where moose are not normally hunted. We’re fortunate to have on hand NDP candidate for the riding of Bad Hills, John Popoff, and Saskatchewan Party candidate, Eddy Huff. Your opinion, Mr. Popoff.”

  “Treaty rights!” Roseanna shouts.

  Mac stands in close, not wanting to miss what the politicians are going to say.

  “I’ve seen a lot worse than this done to the natural environment,” Johnny says.

  “Should the hunters be charged?”

  “I’m not at all clear about First Nations hunting rights off-reserve, and stuff like that, but my personal feelings are that they should not be charged.”

  “Mr. Huff?”

  “On the one hand, I agree with John, but….”

  “You think they should be charged?”

  “Rural folks respect nature, and they respect the laws of the land, even if they might not agree with all of them. They expect that the same laws should apply to everybody. These people have just now rushed out here from the Wildlife Federation banquet in Duncan. The Wildlife Federation is very particular when it comes to hunting regulations.”

  “But should these hunters be charged?”

  “As the bible says, Render unto Caesar…. But,” he pauses to look down at the handcuffs on Glen’s wrists. “I know this man. We should get his side of the story before jumping to conclusions.”

  “I shot the moose,” Roseanna yells from the car. “Put the cuffs on me, not Glen!”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Abner says to Mac. You get attached to them moose. Jen and I were just saying about the old place how it offered protection for the animals, our place. The place of our productive years. Then to see a car parked up the lane with a rifle out the window. I don’t know, Mac.”

  “Grandpa,” Garth pleads, “can’t you do something?”

  “This is all wrong!” Mac shouts as he steps forward, surprising himself as much as anybody else. “Do you know who owns this land?” He speaks to the policeman and out to the crowd. “This yard?” He jabs Abner on the shoulder. “Tell them, Abner. Go ahead. Tell them! You sold this land!”

  Abner stares at Mac, raising his hand without a trace of a shake. He points a finger, but then his eyelids flinch, and his hand drops as he turns his head away.

  “Dad,” Lee says in a hushed voice. “This is none of your business.”

  “As much mine as yours,” Mac says.

  Pete’s voice calls out a second time. “Who’s side are you on anyway, Mac? Your grandson’s bad enough.”

  “Mind your own business, all of you!” Mac says as he strikes out, hitting Lee on the shoulder. Lee grabs his arm, pulling Mac forward to stumble and fall, face-down, in the muck of the moose calf’s guts. Everyone steps back as Mac slithers in the shit, attempting to get back on his feet. He raises his head to address the policeman.

  “We’re on Indian land,” he says as he struggles to rise up on his knees. Angela reaches down to clutch Mac by the arm.

  “Here,” Roseanna says, as she takes her flannel blanket from her knees and hands it out the window. “Wipe him with this.”

  Angela passes the blanket to Mac. Still on his knees, he wipes his face and hands and the smears on his jacket front. Garth helps him to his feet.

  “Maybe all you people should head back to town,” the policeman says as he unlocks the handcuffs on Glen’s wrists. “Indian land,” he tells Glen. “Maybe you should have told me.”

  • Chapter 26 •

  Mac steps down his basement stairs, his thoughts dwelling on the slaughtered moose. He holds in one hand his book of Shevchenko poems, and in the other Roseanna’s blanket to put in the washing machine. In the rumpus room he sets the book on the bar counter and stares up at his trophy mule-deer mount hanging on the wall, his hunt from 1962. One of his achievements. And that has been his life? A series of achievements? Mac, a pillar of his community?

  The basement smells. The mould keeps growing on the walls, and on the tomatoes Darlene brought in from the farm. The water heater has a slow leak. Can it be fixed, or does the whole thing need replacing? He can’t know until he gets a plumber to look at it.

  Is he fooling himself by living a lie? People know what happened, to the extent it seems – as some relic of an event that has no bearing to the present – that it’s more of a legend from another time since it’s been hushed so long.

  He thinks of Angela, and he sees Peggy stepping down from the train the Saturday night she arrived from Ireland. She would have been Angela’s age then. Mac feels younger in years, younger than his seventy-six, but not that young, and he doesn’t know whether or not he’d want to be. The cuckoo-clock doorbell chimes, and he hears Abner.

  “You home, Mac?”

  “Down here, Abner. In the rumpus room. Careful with the stairs, and use the handrail.”

  Abner stares at the stained blanket.

  “Yeah, I was just about to put this in the wash,” Mac says.

  They sit on bar stools and Abner takes a moment to gaze at Mac’s trophy mule deer.

  “I’d say you look about as forlorn as that old trophy hanging down his head looking at us.”

  “Did you see the ones last night?”

  “No, Jen and I had been out for a drive. I just went to the hall to report what we saw up at our farm.”

  “The Indians’ farm,” Mac says.

  Abner takes a baseball from his jacket pocket and rolls it on the table to bounce back off the far rail.

  “Looking for a game of catch?” Mac asks.

  “I wonder if I could still catch a baseball?” Abner asks. “Remember the Indian who hit the homer for the Mainline Rockets?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “This is the ball,” Abner says, and he places it on the countertop.

  “You’ve kept it all these years? Not something I’d want to keep.”

  “You want to talk about it, Mac?”

  Mac realizes that he’s still holding the bloodstained blanket. He takes it to the laundry room where he drops it on the floor. Abner follows, and they stand in front of the washing machine, face to face.

  “Eats at you, Mac?”

  “Last night, or the home run?”

  “Both. The girl’s mighty young. I’m sure there’s nothing romantic involved.”

  “Abner. Please. You know better than to think that.”

  “I don’t mean that, Mac. I just mean that the girl’s a reminder, and it’s eating at you. All this Indian stuff. You dwelling on your buffalo jump all the time, and now this girl. I’d hate to see you getting into anything foolish, like last night.”

  “It wasn’t me being foolish last night.”

  “Is all this support for Indians simply your way to try and pay them back for what you did? I’m just glad I wasn’t there that night. How old is the girl? Barely twenty?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “Jen’s been talking with Esther, and they’re worried about you.”

  Mac opens the lid on the washing machine, bends down to pick up the blanket and drops it in.

  “Women sense these things, Mac.”

  “A couple watchdogs, those sisters.”

  “You don’t spend any time with your family. Jen was wondering if maybe you should start coming to church. Just for the companionship.”

  “Maybe you should go now, Abner.”

  “I thought I’d help you out. Jen said….”

  “Just what did she say about the moose?”

  “Oh, you know her when it c
omes to rights. First she thought of the moose, then it was Indian rights, women’s rights…. She thought it was quite a thing, the old lady shooting it.”

  Mac walks back to the rumpus room to pick up Abner’s baseball. He looks at it a moment, then places it firmly into the palm of Abner’s shaking hand.

  “You know, Mac, I wouldn’t be coming over here if I didn’t care for your welfare…”

  “You’ve been my friend all my life, Abner. I wouldn’t want to see anything change that. Please, can you just leave me be for now? Go back to Jen and tell her I’ll be okay?”

  Abner shuffles up the stairs, stopping twice to look back at Mac, each time about to say something, but Mac just raises his hand.

  “You know the way out, Abner.”

  A basket of his dirty underwear and bed sheets sits on the floor of the laundry room. Mac dumps everything in with the blanket and starts the wash. The tub fills, and then it starts into its rocking motion. The machine is out of balance and he should set it right, but he doesn’t.

  He’s more out of balance than the machine. Jen and Esther worry about him and a twenty-three-year-old Indian girl. They have too much time on their hands. They’ve missed out on too much in their lives, and all they’ve got are their overactive imaginations.

  And all Mac has is turmoil, and a wish to run from it all. His dream is to wish for the simple life, to close with a simple life, in the coulee where he could build a cabin retreat. Mac sits on his bar stool and leafs through his book of poems to find the title, Shevchenko’s Last Poem:

  As if by the broad Dnipro, there

  In a grove, a grove primaeval,

  A little house I’ll build, and make

  An orchard all around it growing,

  And you’ll fly to me in the shades….

  Mac broods in the solitude of his rumpus room, his only companion the fixed stare of his trophy mule deer. The cuckoo-clock chimes once more. What does Abner want now? Mac climbs the stairs, intending to tell Abner that he meant it that he should leave. But it’s not Abner.

  “Didn’t I…?” Mac begins to say, but the words gush out to nothing, like air from a burst balloon. It’s not Abner; it’s a woman. For whatever reason, Mac looks down at her shoes, slipper-like grey shoes, and then slowly up to her same-colour wash jeans, and at mid-thigh her knitted tunic, same colour; it’s an open tunic up top with a v-neck pointed down to the buckle on her belt. She wears a matching black lace-trimmed blouse, and her streaked hair hints of a wild side that reminds him of Peggy.

  Mac swipes at a crust of dried blood on his pant leg. Why didn’t he put his jeans in the wash?

  “Like my outfit?” Jane Smythe-Crothers asks.

  “Sure! I mean, no. I mean, yes. Yes! It makes you look young.”

  “Haven’t you heard? Flattery will get you nowhere?”

  “I was expecting Abner.”

  Mac scrapes more blood off of his jeans. “You’ll have to pardon my appearance,” he says. “And pardon my lack of hospitality. I shouldn’t be making you stand there in the porch. Come in. Please do come on in.”

  “I thought I’d drop by before I leave for Regina.”

  “You’re leaving us?”

  “I’ll be back for the rodeo.”

  Mac attempts to clean the kitchen table. He gathers up newspapers, and grain samples in plastic bags he has brought in from the farm. He wipes dust off the seat of a chair.

  “Here, you can sit. Would you like some coffee? Instant coffee?”

  “Nothing for me, thanks. I had tea at Esther’s. About last night….”

  “Oh.”

  Jane glances down for a moment at the stains on Mac’s knees.

  “The hunting culture,” she says. “All the fuss about a big set of horns, and then the thing with the moose….”

  “Out here, hunting’s a big thing. Who can hunt and where. Who can’t and why not. Who needs a licence, and who doesn’t. Gun registration…. Can you hunt on a farmer’s land without permission….”

  “You stood up for Angela’s brother.”

  “Abner sold that land to the Indians. They shot the moose on their land, which is a treaty right.”

  “It’s all about land, isn’t it? Everything out here is all about land.”

  “It has to be…if a man’s going to farm. And the way the laws are, you don’t want a marriage going bad. It breaks up, the woman gets half the farm.”

  Jane’s face turns red.

  “Did I say the wrong thing?” Mac asks.

  “You hit a sore spot. My marriage has just recently broken up, and we haven’t yet settled the divorce.”

  “I’m sorry….”

  Jane strokes the tabletop with the side of her little finger, forming a ridge of canola seeds leaked from a bag.

  “Darlene said that your house could use a cleaning.” Jane looks at the countertop where Mac has put the grain samples. She runs hot water into Mac’s Kraft Dinner pot.

  “Just leave it,” Mac says.

  Jane tries to smile. The creases by her eyes pinch as she scrubs the pot.

  “I don’t know about the documentary. I don’t know if I’m capable of telling the story right. You have a story to tell, and so does Esther. And so have the Wilkies. Even those clowns at coffee row must have a story. Whose stories are legitimate, and whose aren’t?”

  “That’s why wars are fought,” Mac says.

  “My heart is with the Indians,” Jane says.

  “It seems more and more that way, as time goes by.”

  Jane opens the fridge door.

  “Does this ever need a cleaning,” she says. “Four rotten tomatoes. Where can I dump them?”

  “They’ll flush down the toilet. Here, I’ll take two so you don’t stain your outfit.”

  “Men who live alone,” she says.

  “And women who live alone? You’ve been living alone?”

  “I’m usually on the road somewhere, or on a plane.”

  “It’s lonely to live alone.”

  “Mr. Chorniak….”

  “Call me Mac. Mr. Chorniak makes it sound as if I’m an old man. Just what do they pay housekeepers in Toronto?”

  “I’m guessing a lot more than here.”

  “You know, I’m not totally helpless. I could brew up a pot of real coffee, or else I’ll put on a clean pair of jeans and we’ll go to the boutique for some of that cappuccino. Make you think that you’re right back in Toronto.”

  Jane smiles, this time unreserved.

  “If you’re buying. But first these tomatoes.”

  “In the bathroom,” Mac says. They stand on each side of an iron-stained toilet bowl, an overripe tomato in each hand. Before dropping them into the bowl, Jane starts to laugh. Mac frowns, and then he laughs. They take turns, plop, plop, into the water. They laugh until their eyes fill with tears.

  Once they get back to the kitchen, and once they get their composure back, Mac remembers that on the first day he met Jane he had promised that he’d take her on a tour to Bone Coulee. He suggests they do it now, and she agrees.

  “Anything to get away from having to clean a toilet bowl,” she says.

  Mac turns off the highway at the Lakeview Cemetery Road sign. On a hilltop, a mile to the west, are caraganas surrounding the cemetery and a peaked-roof shed they see through an opening in the hedge. Once there, they look down on the stink lake with its dull yellow salt along the shore and across the lake to the rise of the Coteau hills, and further up to the sky of fluffy white clouds with breaks of blue. Harvested fields stretch to the north for miles, squared off and divided with rows and rows of caragana hedges, a yard site with a massive row of silver bins. And not only to the north are the squares of fields, but to the south and to the east, the direction from which they’ve come. Duncan’s grain pioneers are buried here, in a place with a view of miles and miles of stubble fields, the stink lake, the hills and the sky.

  Neither Mac nor Jane says much of anything, other than Jane’s, “that’s some vie
w,” or Mac’s, “a lot of room with not much in it.” They were both here for Abner’s interview, but this time they pay more attention to the landscape, and both are quiet, as if lost in their own thoughts. There is no sound at all but the cacophony of thousands of geese and ducks coming from the lake.

  A trail leads from the cemetery further west to the lake, and they then turn north, following the shore. The cemetery from here looks even higher on its hill, and they see its one lone spruce tree, scrawny like a jack pine. Along the road, a dozen or so Red Angus cows bunch against a barbwire fence, and on the lakeside brush and swampy grasses grow.

  They reach the grid that runs several miles along the lake’s north shore. Here the ditches are filled with the alkali that gives the lake its smell. At the end of the several miles, they turn north up into the hills. Mac had decided they would enter Bone Coulee from its bottom end, where it empties into the stink lake. Up ahead is the monument.

  “Now I know where I am,” Jane says.

  “Yeah,” Mac says. “For the dedication we came in from the north.”

  When he had brought Angela Wilkie out here to bury the skull they had started their look from the top, where they could gaze down the buffalo jump to the coulee floor. Today, he and Jane are starting up from the floor. With the summer rains, the grass has grown to hide the tipi ring stones, and with all the work done preparing the rodeo grounds for the big rally some of the coulee’s natural effects are lost. But the biggest change for Mac is how small he feels looking up, and how big the coulee really is. They drive up and around the steep contours of the coulee’s east side, not talking, Mac concentrating on avoiding rocks hidden in the grass, and Jane with her eyes shut half the time for fear the truck will tip and they’ll end up sharing the fate of the buffalo.

  They finally reach the top for their panoramic view of the same squared fields they saw from the cemetery, and the same full view of the stink lake with its thousands of birds, only from further away and higher up. After a time, they work their way back down, where Mac tries to follow the impressions the truck tires made in the grass.

  If driving up the coulee made him feel small, trying to find his way down as he loses the tracks makes him feel smaller yet. But he’s been feeling small all day, bombarded with thoughts of whether or not he should tell Jane about his past. They’ve brought lawn chairs and wieners and a Thermos of coffee, and he’ll gather wood to light a fire in the shelter of the green ash grove. A campfire is settling, and maybe he’ll be able to share a little of himself that she’s likely heard parts of anyway. Faint rumours.