Now then, Miss…
June. June Littlewell.
Miss Littlewell, then.
June nods.
What can I do for you today?
June fidgets with her fingers. Well I, I used to go to—I graduated from the downtown campus…
Nordstrom winces visibly at the mention of the downtown campus.
Not that, June says quickly, there’s anything wrong with—I mean, I live in Wississauga now and I’m sure if I had…I mean, it’s so much more…diverse, here, than I—
Er yes, Nordstrom brightens. They are the only ones who take anything seriously at all. Hard workers. Fascinating, really, when you consider that they would be the last people you would expect to have an interest in local history. Nordstrom laughs, as if he’s made some kind of joke. June reddens.
It’s quite something, Nordstrom says reassuringly. It really is quite something.
Yes, well, I was—I mean, I graduated eight years ago, from downtown, so things were—
Eight years ago! You look so young, my dear. Now let me guess. You are thinking of, perhaps, graduate work in the field? You do not have your heart set on it, I hope. Because it is, well, I would not want to discourage you, but you would have to be exceptionally dedicated and talented because, you see, opportunities are limited. Everybody wants adventure, everybody wants to search for, er, buried treasure. So it is a bit of a crowded field, right now, and for the, er, foreseeable future.
No, Professor, I’m not here to find out about graduate school.
Then, er, Miss Littlewell, why are you here today?
You see…I recently moved into a house just above the…river. And I feel like, I’ve been wondering about the…history.
So you want to take the course next year? We would be delighted to have you, naturally. Campus policy is very clear on the issue of, er, community relations. Continuing education students from the area are always welcome. You’ll have to enrol with the Mature Students office if you can forgive the bother. And of course, Professor Nordstrom continues, looking at June in a greedy way that leaves her suddenly uncomfortable, you must also put out of your mind the inappropriate, er, nomenclature, after all, you’re hardly what we think of, that is, er, it’s just that word: mature.
Professor, June says, conspicuously placing her wedding ring hand on top of a closed file folder. I, yes, thank you, I would like to take the course. It sounds very interesting…but what I’m wondering, Professor, what I really need to know is…
What is it? What does she really need to know? The clock ticks. Someone is talking on the phone in the next office over. Professor Nordstrom looks on curiously, his eyes beady, his lips shiny, his cheeks rosy, his thinning hair plastered to his pink forehead.
Who were the first? June blurts. Who were the first people to live in…She’s blushing again. Not, she pushes on, like the first… white people. I mean…the really first people…here.
Nordstrom looks at her with bewildered alarm. He’s not used to dealing with the public, he’s done a few interviews with that young reporter on community television regarding the occasional find of a spear tip. Happy to do it. Good for the university, public profile and what not, increases his overall exposure. Of course he’s not one of those who craves the attention, isn’t about to get caught up in junk science and outrageous speculation just so he can make the newspapers. Slow and steady, that’s his motto. His latest paper is sure to get published in the prestigious Stockholm Journal of Anthropology, which will lead to further advancement in his career, funding, postings, so on and so forth. The more he gets what he deserves the less he’ll find himself having to deal with this kind of…he doesn’t even really know what to call it…
Professor?
Nordstrom does a little quiver, emerges from his flustered reverie. But that is…er…that is an interesting question!
It is?
Of course it is. I mean, do you realize…well, obviously you do not realize, but let us just say that if I knew the answer to that, well, I would not exactly be sitting…er, I would be, that is…well, Nordstrom giggles awkwardly.
But you must know something.
Nordstrom sighs. Surprisingly little, Miss Littlewell. Surprisingly little.
June resists the sudden urge to reach over, grab the man by the collar protruding from his argyle sweater and shake him.
Please, Professor, she says through clenched teeth.
Well…er…I…really…er…He stops and rescans her, as if a bulb had been suddenly turned on, revealing her in a totally different light. Well then, Miss Littlewell, as you might have observed, office hour continues and much to my surprise no paying customers seem to be lining up at my door. Ah ha ha. So why, as they say, the hell not? I will endeavour to—what do they call it? Give you the, er, “cheat sheet” version? How will that be? The Professor’s gaze roves over her, lingers on the folds of her sweatshirt. Now, you want to know who the first were? The very first people to occupy the Lower Wallet River Region?
Yes, I—
Well at least your inquiries are ambitious. You see, what you are really asking is, perhaps, the most contentious debate in archaeology today. Who were the first people to enter into the Americas? How did they get here? Do you understand what I am saying, Miss Littlewell?
Yes. Of course.
Good. Good. Some believe that the Americas were populated by Asian nomads who followed herds of, oh, er, woolly mammoth or beefalo—ah ha, a joke, Miss Littlewell—but, er, some such type mammaloid, across the frozen landmass that is now the Bering Strait waterway separating, er, Siberia from the continental North America, from, er, Alaska. That, at least, is the accepted theory. This, of course, all would have had to take place during the ice age around, oh, 12,000 years ago.
12,000 years, June repeats, without exactly meaning to.
Yes, well, it is quite a number, nothing, of course, as impressive as the finds in Africa, homo erectus and all that, half-a-million years old, those are. At any rate, okay then, it freezes over, makes for a convenient passage, and a bunch of chaps wander over from Siberia and the next thing you know you have some fifteen hundred different tribes from the Arctic to, er, Brazil.
So, June says uncertainly, the first—I mean, the first people who ever, who lived in…Wississauga…came from…Russia?
Ha, very humorous, an interesting way of putting it. But they were not sporting fur hats and leaving a trail of vodka bottles for us to follow, I am afraid. You see, it is—well, er, where to start?—first of all Miss Littlewell, there was no Russia. There were no countries at all. We’re talking about a pre-modern era. Before the dawn, so to speak, of civilization. They were primitives, for lack of a more appropriate word, though of course these days we have to be, er, aware of the, er, cultural sensitivities and of course do what we can to express ourselves, er, appropriately. So these people that we are talking about, they had no countries. No writing. No towns or cities. A rudimentary language at best, the bare beginnings of culture.
But—
And if the first visitors to our, er, little suburb were, indeed, descendants of the nomads who wandered over across the Bering Strait, then we can safely assume that it would have taken them many, many generations for that migration to take place. After all, it’s a long way to walk, from the Alaskan hinterlands to Wississauga. Professor Nordstrom chortles clumsily as if he’d just told a dirty joke.
June stares at him. He’s like some kind of awkward boy. She thought he’d be serious. Tell her something real.
As if sensing her annoyance, Nordstrom shifts tone: Have you ever been to the Arctic?
June shakes her head.
Of course not. But I did not want to assume. I have been several times. The quiet is so intense it feels like the loudest sound imaginable. A vast, wide-open space that defies imagination. Pre-history is like that, as well. It is, you see, er, the study of a time before time as we know it, er, existed. It is a topic so vast and imponderable it is like—here, give me your hand
.
Professor Nordstrom eagerly grabs June’s right hand in both of his. A soft digit probes her palm.
You see, Miss Littlewell, the lines of the palm intersecting. Contradictory. Intricate. Who put them there? What do they mean? They have found, my colleagues, sites in New Mexico and South America, that clearly predate the earlier sites discovered in the North. Sites that seem to even predate the ice age. So where did those people come from? Well it’s really quite impossible to know. Did they boat over from Africa? From Australia? Maybe your Russians are really Laplanders from Greenland? You see Miss Littlewell, we are dealing with an, er, extremely complicated question. It is a maze. We have been following the lines of a palm.
His finger, tracing delicately, perversely.
Your hand is so rough, he says.
I’ve been dig—working—in the backyard. Gardening.
You have been digging Miss Littlewell? What have you been digging? Did you find something that might be of interest to—us—here? Is that why you have come to see me? Because I’d be happy to, er, work with you, to include you in my…research.
Professor Nordstrom’s eyes acquire a different glint.
You know, he continues, there have been, er, several significant sites found, here, in the Wallet River valley. In construction sites, mostly, but that doesn’t preclude a significant find in, say, a backyard. Sadly we haven’t been able to study the findings closely. They are carted away by my colleagues in Natives Studies two buildings over, Miss Littlewell. Two buildings and a whole world apart. Yes, they are the ones who make the decisions around here, and I am afraid that these days the findings—precious, very precious evidence, Miss Littlewell—are quickly covered up again. Well, it is all done for the right, er, reasons, of course. In fact it’s really, er, quite something to see, all kinds of ceremonies and whatnots performed, of course, yes, they still have their customs. But, still, Miss Littlewell, such a shame to have to…well…sometimes, it is possible to do just a quick survey, of the, er, findings, before—So! Nordstrom gives her hand an encouraging squeeze. You say you live over by the river?
No—I mean, yes, but I—
Because the native peoples of the area date back some 8,000 years. Of course there are very few, er, findings from that time. Most of the materials we have of the pre-contact life of the native peoples come from the last, oh, 600 years.
8,000 years?
You did find something, didn’t you, Miss Littlewell?
She pulls her hand out of his grip.
June wanders aimlessly through the campus. The sun peers out from behind distant clouds. Yellow grass borders pavement paths. It’s late afternoon. She should head home and cook dinner. She’s hot under the windbreaker. The low long concrete buildings sit awkwardly in the sun. They’re built for winter, squat forts meant to keep out cold dark days, not let in the spring light. She’s not going back to school. She might be dressed like them. But that’s about it. To that Nordstrom it’s just numbers and facts and statistics. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t know that it’s—real. A gaggle of co-eds scamper past. The late afternoon early spring sun warms her pale face. Nordstrom made it sound like they were animals. Savages. Wandering around in the ice and snow thousands and thousands of years ago. But June knows something else, something else about—
he—
he was—
A building juts over her. June stops walking and looks up. The footpath dead-ends at a larger square of a building, the only structure that seems to have more than three floors. The library, June thinks. Why didn’t she just go to the library? She feels like an idiot. There’s no curse, Rose. No ghosts, no scary spirits. It’s all just science, what can be explained, what can’t be explained…yet. She’s gotten out of the habit of reading. Norm’s not much of a reader. He likes books about famous inventors and rags-to-riches entrepreneurs. Even then he prefers the TV version. Sum it up, he says, when the telemarketers get him on the phone. He calls his little office the library, but it’s more like a museum—a mausoleum, June thinks. A repository for objects fixed in time; the way things were, the way her husband likes to think they are. A wall of framed diplomas hangs over an imposing cherry wood desk. The desk, vast plane of glazed wood, sits almost empty except for a few strategically placed gold fountain pens, journals of dental science, a blank pristine yellow legal pad, and, finally, a sealed box of Cuban cigars, probably a gift from a grateful patient—Norm doesn’t smoke, bad for the lungs, not to mention the dent it would put in what he likes to call the old pocketbook.
June ponders the dark entrance to the library. Students bustle by, hurrying to get things done before the end of the day. Her muscles are stiff, each movement of her arms and legs a conscious effort. It seems dark. The sun dropping. Already? Is it that late? Wind gusts down the path. It’s suddenly colder. Cold out here. June wishes it was summer, feels a hunger for heat, in the summer she’ll travel, have Norm take her somewhere, somewhere tropical, balmy. No. What she really wants are the summers of her childhood: fire flies and the waft of freshly cut grass, the buzz of mosquitoes, the sun gentle on her face, her mother calling her in for dinner. Suddenly she aches for it. Her body bruised with longing.
June wills herself up the steps.
And on into the stacks, tight pressed walls of books dwarfing thin aisles just big enough for one person to move through them. June walks aimlessly, scanning spines. She finds herself in Physics, then Chemistry, rows of over-sized texts with equations in the titles. She keeps moving. History, she thinks. Or Anthropology. Maybe there’s a whole Native section. But she stops at Biology. A row of seriously thick books with names like Complete Human Anatomy. Complete. She likes the sound of that. Here are answers. Facts. Cold hard truths. What was she thinking? Rose, that horrible Professor Nordstrom, they don’t have any answers.
June pulls out the book. She needs both hands, rough palms against a thick, grainy cover. Her muscles are taut, and under them, the bones, flexible yet rigid. Bones.
She takes the book over to one of the little study tables jammed in here and there against the walls of the library. She puts the book on the desk. She opens it to the contents. Description and Detail of the Human Skeleton. June finds the section. There it is. Figure 2.1. She traces the bones with a red, ragged finger. She’s thinking about him now, imagining him. He’s squat and powerful. Legs, June thinks. Strong, short legs. Tibia, she reads. Fibula, patella, femur. June says the words out loud, whispers them, hears them fade out and disappear in the dusty empty library. They were here first, Rose hisses with a note of disgust. Crazy old lady with her ghosts and curses. It’s not like that, June thinks. So what’s it like? June peers back down at the diagram. Bones. She has to start somewhere. She’ll figure out the parts, put them in order. Then she’ll see. What they are. What they want to be.
TIM AND CHARLIE
Monday, April 14
WHEN TIM WAKES UP he’s back on his back. The ground underneath is cold and hard. He rubs his eyes against the soft, filtered light. It’s late afternoon, he guesses. He remembers leaving his father’s place. He remembers moving automatically, inexorably, back to the woods, back to his woods. He climbed the tree. He smoked another joint. And then another. The black night going bleary. Flattened cut-outs of the house, the backyard, the hole in the ground…all of it swirling around him like a cheesy dream sequence in one of those old black and white movies Carly likes to watch, special effects made with glue and scissors, orbiting mobiles, the scenes so long Tim wants to shout at the screen, yeah, yeah, we get it already.
Get what?
Tim screws up his eyes, locking out the daylight. Ah Jesus fuck, his head. After visiting his father, he’d taken a pill. Passing by the Sunfire still parked on the edge of the embankment, he’d suddenly, conveniently, remembered the pills Clay had given him, little white pills in a small plastic vial. Here, he’d said. You look stressed out man. Try these. And Clay had laughed his sardonic, expressionless little laugh.
I took—
<
br /> maybe two, Tim thinks, now sitting awkwardly on the moist dirt and leaf rot under the tree. And he’d climbed. And he’d smoked. And then. And then? Tim jerks himself to attention. And then—it happened. Again. The woman. The hole. A shift in the wind, a parting of clouds. The backyard loomed under him. He could see that the hole was bigger now, deeper and broader. What else? Tim pushes through his fragmented memories of the night before. He puts his hands on his head and presses down against the pulsing pain.
Carly—there was—in the—
He’d stared hard at the hole dominating what had once been that perfect square of turf carpeting his dreams. His father looking at him, his eyes bulging with disbelief, saying what his closed throat couldn’t—Grass? Why the fuck are you asking me about fucking grass?
Because there is a woman digging a whole in the backyard. Because my mother came to me in a cloud of rotting perfume and gently traced the arc of my face. Because he saw, in the hole, a glimmer, a glow, a hint of—maybe movement, maybe just the protrusion of something slightly exposed—
something.
Tim strains his skull against his hands. Something, and he saw it and—
And he smoked and watched and waited, watched and smoked and waited. And without a schedule, without anything to demarcate one moment from another, the high just seemed to linger, a state of perpetual inwardness, a dream turning day-real, an oblong patch grown just for him to lie down in and disappear. He remembers looking at his hands. Touching his face. Fingers edging around his throat. Whose fingers?
Tim stretches his arms above him. His knuckles brush old leaves. He looks up at the vast canopy of the giant tree, patches of blue sky just visible through the reach of suddenly green boughs. He grimaces at the light through leaves stuck in the perpetual motion of unfurling. He needs a plan. He can’t just keep—
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