Stones

by William Bell

  I wrote furiously in point form, the ideas almost leaping out of my pen. The big conflict was played out through the personal rivalry of Scopes’s lawyer, the civil rights advocate and defender of Darwin’s theory, and the prosecutor, a religious fundamentalist opposed to anything that seemed to contradict the Bible.

  So, I concluded, feeling very pleased with myself, the main conflict was played out on three levels: Scopes vs. Tennessee; Science vs. Religion; defence lawyer vs. prosecutor.

  The next day after dinner I drove out along the Old Barrie Road. I thought maybe I could clear my head before I converted my notes to essay form. It was a perfect evening, warm and still, and the late-afternoon light illuminated the fields and woods from the side with a warm, brilliant clarity.

  I cruised the roads, a plume of dust chasing me along, the rumble of gravel under the tires, the occasional ping as a stone popped up and hit the van. I passed a farm. A man and woman came out of a barn, each lugging two pails, as a collie bounded ahead of them across the barnyard. The woman threw her head back as if laughing.

  And then I began to think of the men and women and children who had walked the roads and worked the farms long before that couple and I were born. The grass came up every spring, the trees put out new leaves, the wild-flowers in the ditches beside the road returned. There was a permanence to them. But what about all those people? Were they nothing more than boxes of dust in graveyards?

  If I’m more than my physical body, I thought, where does the “more than” go when I die? I didn’t buy the heaven thing — millions of spirits with or without wings and harps singing hymns and bowing to a god with an inflated ego. But the idea that death was a sort of cancellation, a disappearance, like the flame from a blown-out candle, didn’t convince me either. People lived in other people’s memory. Was that existence?

  As I drove through the hills of Oro I began to feel that the spirits of the dead were, in a way, still there, like the land and the sky. And I realized that I was only beginning to realize what Raphaella had always known.

  And then, just as I turned toward Orillia, I slammed on my brakes, pounded the steering wheel and laughed out loud, even though I knew that I would have to start my essay all over again.

  2

  To say that the main conflict of Inherit the Wind was between science and religion, Darwin and Genesis, is misleading, I wrote. That interpretation takes us down the wrong path — trying to decide which viewpoint is right.

  Scientists base their belief on provable facts and experiments that can be repeated, on logic and mathematics, on observation and information that we get through our senses. If a statement can’t stand this kind of test, it can’t be accepted, they say. They are, I thought with a smile, really into techno-mode. On the other hand, the prosecutor, the local minister and the people of Hillsboro accepted faith, revelation, God talking to prophets, and the words in the Bible exactly as they were written. If you have faith, experiment and proof are not necessary.

  So, I concluded, the real question of the play isn’t Who’s right, Darwin or the Bible? It’s What is Knowledge? Each side has a different answer to that question and won’t accept the alternative.

  No wonder the Darwinists and findamentalists argue, I wrote. They can’t get together because they don’t agree on what knowledge is.

  I got an A+. But I had to share the glory, because, before Raphaella, I could never have written it.

  3

  It was my mother’s wishes and Raphaella that kept my “nose to the grindstone,” as Dad happily put it when he realized that I was a half-decent student again. School was a place where Raphaella and I could be together — in the same building, at least; we shared only one class — for part of the day, without pressure from her mother.

  Raphaella met my mom, and Mom was very taken with her. I knew that Raphaella would tune in on Mom’s state of mind and help her. The two of them seemed to click right from the start, and before long they were giggling and talking in whispers like sisters.

  “They’re making fun of us,” Dad would say.

  “I know.”

  “You love her, don’t you?” he asked once when we were alone.

  “Yes.”

  “Good” was all he said.

  The WME was staged, had its two-week run, got a rave review in the local paper and a lukewarm passing mention on Barrie TV. I suffered through the final performance for Raphaella’s sake.

  “I hope you realize the sacrifice I’m making,” I complained.

  “Yes, Garnet. I know you’re putting your entire psyche at risk.”

  I went to the cast party with her. She didn’t really want to go but felt she should, and decided definitely to attend once her mother ordered her not to. It was a pretty wild event, held at the home of the director, a retired teacher from Georgian College who, according to Raphaella, thought he was Steven Spielberg. There was a lot of raucous talk, a lot of booze flowing, and on the patio where the smokers gathered, there was the sweet odor of the glorious weed.

  Raphaella and I hung back, like two wallflowers at a grade nine dance. I tried to loosen up with a beer, but Raphaella, who never touched alcohol, was quiet. Around us, conversation swirled like a river, and laughter splashed sporadically across the room. The house was packed, hot, noisy. I felt like a blade of grass, standing elbow to chest in the throng.

  When Raphaella went upstairs to the washroom I walked across the damp grass to the shore of the lake. The moon was full, casting sliver lace on the surface of the water. A small sailboat, moored offshore, bobbed peacefully, the halyard ping-pinging against the mast.

  A sudden raunchy laugh burst my reverie and I went back to the house. The patio was lit up with hanging multi-colored globes, and the two glass-topped tables were littered with beer bottles and empty paper plates. Somebody had ground a cigar butt into the glass.

  A young woman stepped clumsily through the sliding door and onto the flagstones. At first I didn’t recognize her. In a glittering silver dress with spaghetti straps, a dolphin tattoo on her shoulder, hair artfully arranged to look tousled, she didn’t look much like the nun she had played in the WME, the one who sings, “How do we solve a problem like Maria?”

  “Oh,” she said when she noticed me.

  I excused myself and reached for the door handle.

  “You’re Garnet.”

  “That’s right.”

  On her tanned skin, just above the dress line, was a wisp of cigarette ash, as if someone had used the space between her partially visible breasts as an ashtray. She swayed slightly as she spoke.

  “I’ve seen you around school. I’m a grade below you.”

  She put a cigarette between glossy lips — her lipstick color matched her dress — and lit it with a plastic throw-away lighter.

  “I enjoyed the musical,” I lied, unable to think of anything else to say. Garnet the Tongue-tied.

  She held her cigarette down at her side, raised it to take a fast puff, lowered it again in a jerky, awkward motion, as if she was just learning to smoke and didn’t particularly like it.

  “It was alright.” She looked me up and down. I felt like a lamp on sale in a department store. “You’re going out with Raphaella.”

  “That’s right.”

  “She still belong to that cult?”

  “That what?”

  “I heard she was a member of some cult or other. They’re into Satan worship and crap like that. Her mother, too. The one who owns the health food store. Nuts and berries, you know. A watchacallit. A coven. That’s why she left Park Street, I heard. People found out and she got hassled.” She took a rapid hit off the cigarette. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess I don’t hang around with the right people.”

  She didn’t get the hint. “I also heard that mark on her face, that stain, sort of, she got in some accident in a ritual,” she confided, and sucked on the cigarette. She blew the smoke from her mouth as if it had a bad t
aste and licked her lips. “Anyway, I’m not saying it’s true. I never seen anything funny going on all the time she was working on the show. I just heard things, that’s all.”

  “Excuse me,” I said, sliding the door open. “I think my car is on fire.”

  I entered the house, struck by the racket and heat, seething inside. A shrill female laugh grated on my ears. Somebody jostled me, pushing through the crowd, gripping two beers in each hand by the bottle necks. The background music — some pathetic rock group whose claim to fame was trashing hotel rooms — hurt my ears.

  The girl on the patio had made me sick. She passed on hurtful gossip, then disavowed it all by saying she had “just heard it,” a kind of verbal hit-and-run. I wanted to find Raphaella and get out of there.

  She was by the buffet table, a long linen-covered disaster area that looked as if it had been carpet-bombed. Glasses, some empty, some half full, some knocked over; plates with lumps of uneaten food; stains on the cloth. A wedge of orange clung to the inside of an empty punch bowl.

  The director of the WME had his arm around Raphaella’s shoulder, kneading her upper arm as he spoke earnestly into her ear. In his free hand he held a drink, and he waved it as he talked, slopping liquor onto the carpet.

  Raphaella looked my way, caught sight of me, desperately mouthed “Help.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Mackie,” I shouted above the din.

  The director turned my way, a look of irritation on his reddened face. He reeked of whiskey and expensive cologne. He removed his arm from Raphaella’s shoulder, raked his fingers through his long salt-and-pepper hair.

  “Eh?” he said.

  I felt like punching him. Instead, I said, “Miss Skye, your ride is here, waiting in the driveway.”

  Raphaella smirked and winked. “Why, thank you, Mr. Havelock. You are most kind.”

  “I can drive you home, dear,” Mackie slurred, stepping between us with his back to me. “Be glad to.” His voice was syrupy.

  “I’d better not,” I heard Raphaella say. “It’s my boyfriend and he hasn’t been the same since he got out of jail. Temper, you see. I just hope,” she added, putting down her glass of ginger ale and stepping away from Mackie, “that he didn’t bring his biker friends with him this time.”

  “Eh?” Mackie said again.

  He stood with his mouth open as we left him and plowed through the raucous crowd.

  We drove to my house and played cards with Mom and Dad. They were trying to teach us to play bridge. After a while, I took Raphaella home.

  “We sure are dull,” I remarked as I turned onto her street.

  “Leaving the party, you mean?”

  “Yeah, and spending the evening with my parents. Make sure you mention that to your mother. That I’m boring. Unexciting. Unadventurous. And therefore no threat.”

  “I already have,” she said, laughing, and kissed me good night.

  I had decided not to say anything about the girl in the silver dress and what she had told me. Raphaella and her mother, part of a cult? Ridiculous. And yet, I had to admit I had doubts. The key to a cult was, I supposed, secrecy. Raphaella had things that she wouldn’t talk about. And she had studied the occult. She knew about numerology.

  I drove home. Whether I was angrier at Silver-dress for the gossip or myself for my doubts, I couldn’t tell.

  chapter

  There was a story I read in elementary school one day when my grade eight teacher became so exasperated with my behavior that she sent me out of the room.

  “Just go,” she snapped. “I don’t care where. Just go.”

  I wandered up and down the halls for a while and ended up in the library, and the librarian put me in a corner with an old volume of Greek myths.

  There was a musician named Orpheus whose skill on the lyre was so heavenly that even birds and animals fell under its spell. Humans couldn’t resist its charm. Orpheus’s wife was named Eurydice, and he loved her with all his soul.

  Ordinarily a tale that began that way would have turned me off immediately, but this time the force of the story pulled me along.

  Orpheus and Eurydice were happy together. Along came the villain, the son of a god, whose name I forgot, but it began with an A. He was hot for the lovely Eurydice, and being half-god, he was used to getting what he wanted. One day, when Orpheus was off on a gig somewhere, A. visited Eurydice, and, when she told him to get lost, he attacked her, cursing her and tearing at her clothing. Running frantically away from him, she stepped on a poisonous snake and it bit her. She passed away soon after.

  Orpheus was numb with grief, and his music died with Eurydice. He saw no reason to continue to play, or to live either. So desperate was he that he decided to go to the underworld, Hades, to find Eurydice and stay there with her. He took his lyre with him.

  Orpheus had to convince the Queen of Hades, Persephone, to let him find his wife and remain there with her. Orpheus, she said, could take his wife home from the underworld. But there was a condition. “Eurydice will walk behind you on your return to the mortal world,” she told Orpheus. “This you must believe. You must prove your love for her. Do not look back. If you do, our bargain is forfeit.”

  Orpheus began his homeward trek, but with each step his worry and his doubt increased, until, finally, he gave in to his insecurity and turned around. Briefly, he glimpsed his beloved wife. She raised her hand to reach for him, then dissolved into thin air.

  And one day near the end of June, during the final exam period, I let my curiosity about Raphaella and her mother, and my frustration that Raphaella still closed a lot of her life from me, overwhelm me. I broke faith with her by going against my promise to wait and let her explain things in her own way, in her own time.

  I went to confront her mother.

  2

  The Demeter Natural Food and Medicinal Herbs store — a name so long it barely fit on the sign above the window — was on the west side of Peter Street across from the art gallery in the Sam Steele Building. One afternoon, when Raphaella was at the school writing her geography final, I took a deep breath, pushed open the door and stepped in.

  It was a small store, suffused with the strong, clean odor of dried herbs. I saw Mrs. Skye immediately, behind a counter, her back to the door. She tossed a look over her shoulder, smiled automatically, obviously not recognizing me — no surprise, since she’d only seen me through the van’s windshield.

  “Be with you in a minute,” she said, turning away. “Can’t stop in the middle of this prescription.”

  She stood before what can only be described as a wall of small drawers that rose from a table with a set of scales on it, along with three or four wooden mortar and pestle sets of different sizes, a stack of small paper bags and a few bottles of liquid. Each of the drawers was no bigger than an envelope and had a small wooden knob on it.

  She worked quickly, consulting a piece of paper, pulling open a drawer, extracting material that looked like leaves, sticks or dried flowers, shutting the drawer, weighing, adding the results to one of the brown bags, going to another drawer.

  She was slender, like Raphaella, with short brown hair cut without style. She was wearing a green smock over a red T-shirt, and jeans. Not exactly a fashion statement. Not exactly a cult member either.

  I took the chance to look around. There was a machine to make peanut butter at the end of a counter beside a canvas sack of peanuts. On the walls were shelves of bottles and jars, packages and boxes of various health foods and supplements. There was a bookcase, too. I scanned some of the titles: proper diet for health, proper diet for cancer and heart disease sufferers; acupuncture and acupressure. There were a few books on midwifery and a number on “natural religion.” A room at the back was devoted to dry goods — more kinds of beans and peas and rice than I knew existed; cereals; spices and herbs, all organically grown.

  I made my way back to the counter. Whoever had made it knew what he was doing. The front was tongue-and-groove pine, the top six-inch pine planks
, all finished in a natural color. On the top were pamphlets on Orillia’s Mariposa Bike Trail, membership forms for Amnesty International and Greenpeace, and one booklet that said, “Your local golf course: an ecological disaster.” I know where Raphaella gets her T-shirt captions, I thought.

  Raphaella’s mother was now sitting at a small desk, writing something. I cleared my throat, anxious to get things over with. She looked up, stapled the piece of paper she’d been writing on onto the bag, then stared at me as if searching her memory for my mug shot. She wore an ankh on a gold chain around her neck, like Raphaella’s.

  Just as her eyes widened in recognition, I spoke. “Mrs. Skye, I’m Garnet Havelock.”

  She stood up.

  “Raphaella’s boyfriend,” I added.

  “It’s Ms., not Mrs. I recognize your voice. From the phone. Only you don’t sound so rude today.”

  Well, this is getting off to a great start, I thought. I decided to ignore her barb. “I wanted to come and introduce myself.” I held out my hand to shake with her.

  She didn’t move. “I see,” she said. Her voice was quiet and firm, like Raphaella’s. Confident.

  “I was hoping we — you and I — could, well, get to know each other. Break the ice, if you see what I mean.”

  She didn’t move, didn’t speak, just looked at me as if I had a target on my forehead. A tiny, sharp edge of anger sliced into me. She was making no effort to be friendly. She wanted me to feel uncomfortable, foolish.

  “Raphaella doesn’t know I’m here. She had nothing to do with this.”

  Still no response.

  “So, are you going to talk to me or stare at me for the rest of the day?”

  She put the paper bag down on the desk and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “I’m in love with your daughter,” I said, trying to be as self-assured as she seemed to be, and failing. “She loves me, too. I think that’s what she’d say. If you asked her, I mean.”