Sisters of Grass

by Theresa Kishkan

  The night is now

  half-gone; youth

  goes; I am

  in bed alone

  THE OLD ROAD FROM Nicola to Kamloops winds through grassy hills which take your breath away in their stillness. Past Stump Lake, Napier Lake, Trapp Lake, Ussher Lake, unseen in the west but remembered for the murder of John Tannatt Ussher by the sad McLean gang in 1879, past sway-backed cabins collapsing gently into fields, fields alive with savannah sparrows, horned larks, coyotes, through Rose Hill and Knutsford, until it finally leads you into Kamloops itself. Each rise and fall of grass slope is like a basket, a coiled burden basket of split root, hooked through with the bark of bitter cherry, the bleached stems of canary grass. The road a handle, a scaffolding, holding the baskets together with their contents of berries, freckled meadowlark eggs, the occasional horse pausing in its grazing. Driving, we are quiet, thinking of the cattle who passed over this ground, the home-steads forged by those paying the ten-dollar fee under the Dominion Homestead Regulations and then building a house, breaking the land, fencing their quarter section. The maps are quilted with the neat stitches of fencelines, threaded with creeks where stock might wander to drink — Campbell, Peterson, Anderson — and jewelled with lakes, blackbirds whistling from the reeds. In old dooryards are lilacs and roses gone wild; lines of Lombardy poplars remember their planting. A girl born in this landscape would know the wind’s quiet voice in the cottonwood leaves and would stop to listen to skeins of geese coming from the south to land on the sloughs. In such ways the world is remembered.

  Nicola to Kamloops, May 15-18, 1906

  Two days later, the family was waiting for the stage at the Forksdale- Kamloops road. After breakfast, Jenny’s brother August had brought them down from the ranch in the buggy, and he would take care of the home ranch while they were away. Jenny and Margaret waited in the buggy while the younger children watched for the stage and William and August talked about the Miner capture. It was all anyone talked about these days. Many felt that a mistake had been made, that a genial man like George Edwards couldn’t possibly be the notorious train robber the police insisted he was. They were awaiting positive identification by a Pinkerton detective, but his tattoos gave him away, or so the Corporal had told the men at Douglas Lake. A ballet dancer around his right arm, two stars on his left arm, and a heart pierced with two daggers. There was also a bluebird on his hand. These marks had not been noteworthy among the native people in the Nicola area because the Thompsons often tattooed themselves in connection with important dreams or to inspire courage and strength.

  The stage announced itself in a cloud of dust, four bay horses at a brisk trot. It drew up, and the horses stood still while the Stuart family said their goodbyes to August. William’s friend Angus Nelson was driving, so after tying the luggage securely onto the roof, the two men sat on the driver’s bench with Tom in the middle; Tom held the reins proudly on the straight stretches of road. Jenny, Margaret and the two girls were tucked inside, Mary and Jane holding on to the edges of their seats for dear life. Jenny looked nervous. Margaret was beginning to understand that her mother was happiest at home with her own children around for company or with other ranch families whom she knew well. She would go with the family to concerts and outings, but she seemed uncomfortable in large groups or in unfamiliar settings. Once Margaret had observed a woman speaking quietly to another as the Stuart family arrived at a Victoria Day fete in Nicola Lake, and she overheard one woman say “klootchie” and nod significantly at Jenny Stuart. Later Margaret asked her father privately what the term meant. Furious, he told her never to use such a word in the presence of her mother, that it was meant to demean Indian women, like squaw, and he would not hear it used in reference to his wife or any other woman.

  “But Father, I only asked you because I didn’t know, I’d never heard it until the women at the picnic —”

  William pulled her to him. “Margaret, I’m sorry, I know you weren’t being disrespectful. There’s an attitude, though, you will come upon it in your life, possibly you already have, that distinguishes between Indians and whites. It’s hypocritical, you know, especially in this valley where a lot of the families have intermarried — look at the Coutlees and Voghts. I love your mother, and I won’t have her hurt. And, my dear, that goes for you as well. You are as good as anyone alive, you have the blood of the Stuart kings in your veins as well as noble Thompson blood. Keep your head high, and don’t let the small souls of the world hurt your feelings.”

  In the box of her life, a length of bone, some photographs, a program. How do I balance the composition of what might be expected of a young woman of her time and place with what might be remarkable? What have I learned from dreaming her shape into my life, and how can I know what is memory and what is desire? One person struck by a stone, said Pliny, forgot solely how to read and write. Another who fell from a very high roof forgot his mother. And as sleep gradually steals over one, it restricts the memory and causes the inactive mind to wonder where it is. But what if the mind has not forgotten, exactly, but has remembered a girl who might never have been? Not a mother, not a sister, but a younger earlier self? What if the mind carries her as imagery of nostalgia, which is only a longing for home? And what is home but the cradle of the self? Carried in the wild rye, the bunch-grass, the yellow feathers of rabbitbrush, in soft wind, the subtle seeds pause and attach.

  Thinking on what her father had said, Margaret remembered a certain coolness on the part of some of the girls at school, but she’d put that down to the fact that she didn’t attend regularly and hadn’t made friends as easily as the others. And there had been lots of children who were either fully Indian or who had one Indian parent. Oddly, Margaret had never really thought about this before in any meaningful way. She was who she was, they were who they were. Sometimes you liked a person, found her congenial, sometimes you had nothing in common. Many were eager for male attention and talked endlessly of who was sweet on whom and whether their affection was returned. Little tokens were exchanged carefully, so the teacher wouldn’t catch on. Margaret had never received a token from a boy or a girl, nor had she given one. Because she came to school infrequently, she was intent on learning as much as she could while she was there. She couldn’t remember taunts specific to her Indian blood, though. Or would she have recognized a taunt if she heard one?

  None of it mattered this fine May morning on the road to Kamloops, but it did make Margaret feel a protective tenderness toward her mother, and she linked her arm through Jenny’s and put her head on her mother’s shoulder. Her mother patted her hair with one gloved hand. Jenny Stuart wore a dark blue gabardine skirt she’d made that winter and a jacket of soft grey wool. At home she never wore a hat, but for the trip she’d trimmed her navy straw boater with a piece of grey velvet ribbon. It was soothing to sit by her and smell both the unaccustomed fragrance of clothing stored in a cedar-lined trunk and the familiar scent of her hair and skin.

  The ride to Kamloops took twelve hours. The usual stage from Forksdale was spread over two days, but Angus Nelson told William he was trying a one-day run, and this fit nicely with William’s plans. Stops were made along the way, one to change horses at Rockford on Stump Lake, where tea and hot biscuits were provided. Later, Angus stopped to water the team as needed at lakes near the road; he untied a bucket from under his seat and dipped it into the cold water, letting each horse drink its fill. Everyone stretched their legs and disappeared behind bushes to relieve themselves on the warm ground. It was a beautiful drive, the road rising high and passing hill after hill of blowing grass. Marshes alive with blackbirds could be seen as the horses clipped along, and once Tom called out for them to see coyotes at play in the sunshine.

  It was growing dark when they arrived in Kamloops, but the city was vibrant with life. The stage took them directly to the Grand Pacific Hotel, its entrance on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Lansdowne Street lit by a street lamp. The manager was expecting them and directed a boy to take th
eir bags up to the suite of rooms Father had reserved. The children were thrilled to see that the window of their room opened onto a balcony overlooking the street. They kept calling one another to see the lively scene below — two men laughing loudly as they left the hotel’s saloon; a Chinese family hurrying in another direction, the mother dressed in bright clothing and walking in small steps behind the father; a group of men seated under the trees outside the hotel talking of the Miner gang. Phrases of their conversation rose up to the family leaning out the window, screened by darkness and the new leaves. Father explained that the train robbers were being held in the Kamloops prison awaiting their trial on May 28. The manager, who had come up to make sure all was in order, told him that he was lucky he’d booked the rooms early. Now, what with Madame Albani’s concert and the Miner trial, most hotels were full to the brim. People were coming from as far away as Vancouver to attend the trial and to get a glimpse of the notorious Bill Miner.

  “He may be the fella, all right, but I hear over and over again that George Edwards wouldn’t hurt a fly, everyone likes him, and there seem to be irregularities about his arrest. They say the Pinkerton detective, a weasely sort called Seavey, led him to believe he was an attorney. False pretences, I say, and so say many others, too. Ah, Stuart, you’ll find this town fairly buzzing.”

  It was difficult to get to sleep that first night in Kamloops. The beds were unfamiliar, the pillows deep and soft. Margaret woke in darkness and couldn’t get her bearings. Where she was accustomed to seeing the moon through a lattice of ponderosa directly in front of her bed, there was a wall. Then she remembered where she was; she could hear her parents talking quietly in the other room, which reassured her, and she sank back into the pillows to make the morning come sooner.

  I have slept in old hotels, not the Grand Pacific (famous for its bathrooms, among the first in Kamloops), which burned in the thirties, but others, in Paris, in Dublin, in the Nicola Valley itself. I know she listened to the creak of timbers beyond the dark ceilings as the building adjusted its weight, the sound of pulleys, the quiet voices of the kitchen help at first light, taking a moment to enjoy a smoke before beginning their day. And the peach-skin softness of the sheets in their folds, the smell of soap and the wind of Kamloops, a different wind from the one she was accustomed to, bringing with it train fumes and commerce and the faint odour of the North Thompson tumbling from its headwaters down through Avola, Clearwater, McLure. All over Kamloops while she slept, the city waited for morning. In the jail, the three accused robbers slept fitfully; in the Fulton household, the family of the Attorney General dreamed of his successful prosecution of Bill Miner, still to come; in the newspaper offices, the typesetters wiped inky hands on their aprons and held up chases of type to place in the presses, pulling a proof of the headlines, excited at playing a small part in history. And on the road from the Cherry Creek ranch, a hopeful wrangler rode a pretty bay mare at a quick trot, not wanting to miss an appointment with William Stuart.

  Rising before the others, Margaret went to the window in her nightdress to look out at the street. Sounds of the morning filled the air — a rooster, even in the city, crowed the hour; buckets clanging in the livery stable told her that horses were being fed; a boy carried newspapers down the street and dropped them at many of the doorsteps, including the hotel’s. Two men in suits were striding down the road, and one looked up to see her in the window, her shoulders bare and her hair still unbrushed. He raised his hat and called out to her — she was a lovely sight to behold this fine May morning. Margaret’s hands flew to her face and she left the window in a hurry, her cheeks burning. By now the children were stirring, and she could hear her father cough. She put her clothes on and went down the hall to use the bathroom. A maid just coming out the door told her that the towels were fresh, and there was lots of hot water should she care to bathe. What luxury, thought Margaret, as she ran a tub of water and stretched out in comfort. At home, they heated water for baths on the stove and then emptied the tub, bucket by bucket, after. But this was lovely, hot water up to her chin, and then big towels to dry off with as the water ran down the drain, whirling like an eddy on the Nicola River. She returned to the suite of rooms to find her family waiting for her so they could go down for breakfast.

  A table had been set for them, and a newspaper was folded beside the plate William Stuart sat to. He unfolded it, shook out the wrinkles and read the headline aloud: THE CHASE, THE CAPTURE AND THE COMMITTAL. A waitress served coffee to William and Jenny and looked inquiringly at Margaret, who started to demur but then impulsively held out her cup. The newspapers made the capture of George Edwards seem heroic, she thought, as though a dangerous criminal had been caught at great risk to the team of men and dogs who had tracked them down. She saw again the three men around a campfire preparing a meal, the approach of the posse, the questions, Mr. Edwards’s calm replies, and then she heard the sound of gunfire and screams as she galloped away over the spring grass, the meadowlarks silent in the pauses between gunshots. The coffee tasted good, and she breathed in its aroma as she raised the cup to her mouth.

  “Margaret, if you’re going to drink coffee, you should at least take cream. There’s no need to drink it black, as though you’re in a cowcamp.” Her father smiled and then returned to the newspaper. He didn’t stop reading until plates of eggs and slices of pink ham, mounds of potatoes dusted with parsley, and high golden biscuits were placed in front of the family. Margaret thought she couldn’t possibly eat such a huge breakfast, but each mouthful tasted wonderful, and before she knew it, her plate was clean. Her brother and sisters, too, had made similar short work of their breakfasts and were eager to be excused to explore the street. Jenny Stuart took them out into the morning after conferring with her husband to find out what plans he had for the day. He told her he’d arranged to meet someone at a stable down the road in order to inspect a mare. He’d take Margaret, if Jenny could spare her, because he wanted her opinion.

  Margaret changed her shoes and they walked the short distance to the stable, arriving there before the man they were to meet. William knew the owner and went into the barn with him to see some saddles, and Margaret remained on the bench in front of the stable, reading the newspaper that had been left there. Each player in the capture of the train robbers had a tale to tell — the provincial constable who first met the three near the Stevens ranch and raced back to Douglas Lake for help, the Royal North West Mounted Police sergeant from Calgary who approached the three men by the fire and accused them of the crime. The paper was full of the story from all possible angles, from notes of the preliminary hearing two days earlier to an account of Bill Miner’s connection to the Aspen Grove and Nicola Valley communities. Margaret was engrossed in reading every word when her father came out. She tucked the newspaper into her handbag and rose from the bench as her father said, “Margaret, come see this mare. Tell me what you think.”

  William led her through the barn to some holding pens behind. A bay mare was waiting there, pushing her nose curiously in Margaret’s direction. She blew air into the flat palm the girl offered her, then lowered her head to smell Margaret’s dress, allowing the girl to stroke her ears and run her hands down the mare’s neck to the muscular chest. She removed a twig from the forelock, which was short and brushy, like a thistle. The mare was not big, Margaret judged her to be about fifteen hands, maybe fifteen-one, but she gave an impression of vitality because of her broad chest, strong legs, healthy coat and wide clear eyes.

  “She’s from Cherry Creek,” William explained. “They’ve got a good breeding program right now, and I’d like to have a purebred mare with her size and strength. I think she’d throw a good foal if we bred her to the Bonny Prince.” The Bonny Prince was the stud that William had acquired a few years earlier, a handsome stallion gentle enough to use as a saddle horse. Margaret thought the prospect of a foal from the two was excellent, and she told her father so.

  “Her legs look good, Father, no splints or spavins
that I can see. Does she mind her feet being held?”

  “Why don’t we try her?” William climbed over the fence and approached the mare’s left side. She looked at him curiously but didn’t move, even when he lifted each foot in turn, examining the inner foot for thrush or damage. He ran his hands down her legs to feel for lumps or sensitive areas and was pleased to find none, pleased that the mare stood quietly for this. Putting his fingers in the sides of her mouth, he opened her jaw so that he could examine her teeth. When he’d finished she blew so hard that her lips vibrated, but still she was calm.

  The horse’s handler, sensing that a deal was imminent, went into the barn to leave William and Margaret alone.

  “I think we’ll take her, Margaret. What do you think?”

  “She’s lovely, Father. Do you intend to ride her home?”

  William had thought about this and wondered how best to do it. “She’s not in foal now, they weaned her last colt a few months ago, and she’s in good condition, I’d say. What about you riding her along with the stage to the stopping house at Trapp Lake, then continuing home in the stage with the others? I’ll stay overnight at Trapp Lake and finish the journey the next day. I don’t want to strain her; it would be better to keep her pace a little slower than the stage’s, I think.”

  “But Father, I’ve nothing to ride in. I didn’t bring clothes I could wear to ride all that way.”

  William looked at his daughter, cleared his throat once, then twice. “Margaret, I was wrong about the trousers. I shouldn’t have let my sister’s comments make a difference in the way we conduct our lives. When she and my mother were visiting, I wanted them to approve of what I’d done, the life I’d made with your mother, and Elizabeth’s outburst reminded me so much of our father and all that I’d wanted to leave behind. Not the people, if that makes sense, because I did and continue to love them, but their attitudes. And then I behaved just as they wanted me to, I don’t know why. I suppose old habits are hard to break. Anyway, girl, you’re seventeen now, a young woman, and it’s time you stood up for yourself. I’ll give you some money and you can buy yourself comfortable clothes for riding. Fair enough?”