by Patrick Lane
But she had cried since she came here. Yes. She knew that. Mister Harper had made her cry and so had Imma. They had both made the tears come into her eyes, but she wouldn’t let them hurt her like they did at the school. She remembered the children leaving to go back home in the summer. But not all the children went home. She didn’t and there were others like her. They were the orphans. How she hated that word orphan. It sounded so pretty and it was so ugly, that word. And sometimes they said the word foundling and they told her that’s what she was, a girl who was found, but she knew she was stolen. The Sisters and Brothers were the ones who used those words. They said she was an orphan, a foundling, so that’s what she was, words, and they meant she didn’t have a father or a mother, but Cliff said she did have a mother and father and he would help her find them up in the Cariboo among the Toosey people. Maybe she was one of them, she prayed she was one of somewhere, one of someone.
Cliff, Crowchild, and how she was afraid to say that other name because none of the children were ever allowed to say their real names, and she had never had a real name like Cliff, like Crowchild did. She didn’t have any kind of real name. Alice wasn’t her name and whatever it was, whatever it had been before the black wings and the white hands took her, before the dust, had been lost. It was the day they stole her. And the fear and the hurt came back, and she was covered in the blanket in the dust, in the dust.
Alice couldn’t remember how long she had been sitting on the mattress, just that it was where she was and that she must have been dreaming the dream again. It was why she was so tired. And she reached out and pulled the bag toward her, the one Mister Harper had left. She placed it on her lap and she undid the knot Mister Harper had tied in the top of the bag and she pulled the bag open and began to take out the things he had put in there, the pretty things, the white dress and the skirt, the two sweaters, and the other clothes, the underwear that was coloured pink, and then she couldn’t look at any of the things anymore. She couldn’t look at them and she picked them up and she pushed them back in the bag, she pushed them back in the bag, the sweaters and the skirt and the dress and everything, the pink underwear, the panties, the red shoes, and she pushed them in hard and she tied the string in a knot and she made another knot and then another one until the two strings were one string, a long string of knots she had made, and she didn’t cry, she didn’t cry, not once she didn’t cry.
JOEL SAT IN THE EMPTY ROOM at the end of the second table in the cookhouse, a thick slice of sirloin steak, its fat charred at the edges, taking up half his plate, a mound of rough-mashed potatoes beside it, the spuds drenched in gravy left over from Wednesday’s roast beef. The pallor of canned peas shone a pale green, smeared with melted margarine. He picked up the salt shaker and shook it over the food, following it with pepper and an extra lump of margarine on top of the gravy, the fat in oily pools trembling. Taking up his knife he took another scoop of margarine and covered a thick piece of Wang Po’s bread with it, dredging the end of the slice into the gravy and pushing it whole into his mouth. As he chewed he cut a wedge of meat from the steak and forked it into the potatoes, gravy dripping from the tines.
He felt like he hadn’t eaten in a week, no breakfast, no lunch, Emerson calling him away to the swamp and the church before he’d had more than an hour or two of sleep. Then working at the church again in the late morning, him fixing the floor, stacking odds and sods of lumber, building shelves under the altar. And Myrna’s mother taking him on that walk to the old tree and then giving him the little rock. Myrna’s rock was different than his, but the rock he’d got from her was just as important even if he couldn’t figure out why.
Myrna’s brother flickered in his mind and he wondered if Emerson was still hanging around. He didn’t think it likely the boy had any more to eat that day than he did, so busy he had been watching Joel whenever he could as he helped his brothers fix the roof, punching raw clay mixed with cement between the stones so the foundation might hold a few more years. Joel forked another piece of meat into his mouth and when he was done chewing and swallowing he picked up his plate and carried it around the empty tables to the kitchen where Wang Po had begun the cleaning up. Joel walked in and put it down by the cutting block.
The wood of the block was cupped from the years of cooks, Wang Po adding to the shape over the three years of his butchering, the sides of pork and beef reduced to steaks, roasts, chops, hamburger, and stew meat by Wang Po’s artful knife, the bones boiled for stock. Joel had watched him many times, the blades and sharpening steel, the whisper of the knife as it entered the meat never nicking a bone, the knife edge slipping along a rib like a feather caressing a breast.
“You hard sharpen a good blade only once,” he’d said to Joel, “After that you touch the edge to steel, like what you call an eyelash.” Wang Po had held up the knife he was using. “This blade is no good,” he said. “Needs sharpening all the time.” He rolled his shoulders. “Your country can’t make a knife,” he said. When Joel had asked why he used it, Wang Po said, “I left all my knives in China.”
Joel had asked where in China and the cook had tipped his head to the side. “A soldier in Shanghai has my best knife.” He smiled. “Cipango. He used it only once.”
Wang Po didn’t look up from the sink full of dishes. “What do you want, Joel?” he asked, pushing clean plates into the racks for drying. “More? The steaks are in the dish over there,” he said, nodding in the direction of the counter by the door. “Three pieces. You take one, leave the others for Art when he comes, okay?”
“It’s not for me,” said Joel. He hesitated and then said, “There’s this kid follows me around. Emerson Turfoot from up the mountain. Anyway, I don’t think he’s had food today. I’m pretty sure he’s outside waiting for me to come out so he can follow me again. Do you think, maybe he could come in and eat something? I could give him part of my steak, if that’s all right?”
“I know him,” said Wang Po, his arms elbow deep in soapy water.
“How do you know him? I mean…”
“He eats here sometimes,” said the cook.
“I’ve never seen him at the cookhouse.”
“He talks a lot, that boy,” Wang Po said as he stacked dishes in the steel cradle for drying. When Joel looked at the cook in wonder, Wang Po said, “He’s out there,” and he pointed with a butcher knife at the door, a blanket of flies clinging to the screen.
Joel put his plate down on a stool and went out, the flies scattering in a cloud before returning as the door slapped shut. He looked at the wall of cedars beyond the garbage cans and parking lot. “Hey, Emerson,” he called, “you out there?” When there was no answer, he yelled, “Come get some food.” As he spoke, the flies ceased their monotonous whine, the gulls alone crying in their wheel.
“Emerson,” he called. “It’s okay. Wang Po’s got lots left over.”
Branches shifted in a clutch of sapling aspens and Emerson stepped out and peered into the shadows to see if anyone else was there.
“It’s okay,” Joel said again. “It’s Saturday and there’s an extra steak. Potatoes too, and gravy.”
Emerson took a last look toward the road and the station and loped over to the cookhouse, his boots slapping on the hard-packed dirt, his body hunched as if not wanting to be seen.
“Quick,” said Joel as he opened the screen door a crack, the boy turning sideways and sliding in, Joel right behind him.
“You let the flies in, you better kill them,” said Wang Po from the racks.
Behind the cook were the yellowed oak cutting block and two stools. Joel’s plate was there and beside it another plate, both piled high with food, knives and forks, and a tall glass of milk for each of them.
“Better here in the kitchen.” Wang Po waved a pot in the air. “Quiet. Nobody here but us chickens,” he added, laughing into his beard.
Joel took off his hat and set it down in the block, the two of them pulling stools up and, straddling them, set to emptying their
plates. Wang Po glanced at them every few minutes making sure they were eating it all, ready to pile on more potatoes and gravy. A separate plate with a steak and potatoes sat on the blackened steel rack in the oven, the door partly open, the last of the fire’s heat keeping the food warm in case Art came late to the cookhouse.
As Joel ate he thought of Guwang Wah and his wife Bao back in Edmonton, how they had fed him in the past winter when they found him cold and hungry on the street, Bao leaning down to put more noodles or rice in his bowl at closing time, sometimes a mound of chow mein, and every day at noon chop suey, chopped eggs and strange vegetables mixed up and piled on rice. What they cooked was different than anything he’d ever eaten. Wang Po cooked that kind of food for himself with a pan called a wok when he wasn’t busy. Joel loved the smells, remembering Whyte Street, the Elite Café. A great river flowed in Edmonton’s valley just like theirs, a soft and muddy one that rose from the mountains he loved. That was only months ago. He was just a kid then, like Emerson. So much had happened since that night when he almost froze to death in the gondola car, Bill Samuels hauling him out and dropping him by the tracks. The first good thing he remembered from that night was Art bringing him here to the cookhouse and Wang Po giving him hot soup and a sandwich of bacon and sausage.
Joel knew he wasn’t the same now.
And Emerson beside him attacking the steak and potatoes, crusts of bread propped against his plate soaking up gravy, margarine smeared on the crust. What made the boy want to follow him? He knew it was Myrna and him up the mountain made Emerson start, but why was he still around?
“Hey,” he said to Emerson.
Emerson looked up from his bread and gravy.
Joel took a bite of steak and said, “Wang Po says you talk to him.”
“You got a good hat,” said Emerson as he pushed a chunk of meat into his mouth.
“My hat?”
“Yup.”
And then it was silent. Finally, Joel said, “You don’t have to follow me everywhere, you know. After I’m done here I’m going to take a shower in the bathhouse. And after that I’m going to the dance. I saw you there at the Hall one time when there was a dance going. You were hiding at the back where the coats were piled.”
Emerson kept working on the steak and potatoes as Joel talked. His fork moved like a small backhoe shovel, his mouth either full or being filled. Joel had never seen anyone so small and skinny eat so much, so fast. “Slow down,” he said.
Emerson kept going at his food, using the bread scraps to wipe up the gravy slopped over the side onto the board.
“I need to find Art,” Joel said. “He needs help. You can come along if you want.” When Emerson didn’t say anything, Joel said, “If you’re with me at least I’ll know where you’re hiding.”
Wang Po was hanging wet cloths and towels on the line above the stove as Joel talked. “If you can’t find Art Kenning, he’s at the cabin, or down by the pond he made out of the creek where he sits sometimes,” Wang Po said. “It’s where he is if he isn’t anywhere else. If he’s not there he’s nowhere.”
Emerson busied himself with his knife scraping at the last bits of potato and gravy stuck to his plate.
Joel wondered how Wang Po knew about Art’s pool. And about him too. It seemed to Joel like everyone knew what he was doing before he knew himself. Art, Isabel, and now Wang Po. Emerson too. He showed up no matter where Joel was. Emerson got to wherever Joel was going before Joel did.
Wang Po left the kitchen and went out into the dining room to clean tables and return the room to order so it would be ready for the eight o’clock Sunday breakfast. The door to the kitchen closed behind him. The last crust eaten, Emerson looked warily around. It seemed to Joel Emerson hadn’t kept watch of anything but the food in front of him, but he knew that wasn’t true.
Emerson leaned away from Joel and slipped off the stool, his fist at his pants as he pulled them up his slender waist, undoing his belt and tightening it again.
“You gotta good hat,” he said.
“I got it back on the Lake before I came here,” said Joel. “I found it on a post down on the Monashee.”
“It’s a good one,” he said.
“You don’t have to follow me,” Joel said. “I’m not going anywhere secret.”
Emerson took a step back from the stool. Joel took it as a sign the knife hadn’t appeared from wherever the boy had it hidden. After seeing what he did with Ernie at the bunkhouse Joel needed to be sure Emerson’s hands were empty whenever they appeared from anywhere near his scabbard. The kid was staring over Joel’s head at the window.
He tried to figure out what Emerson was thinking. Old boots and scruffy pants, the shirt buttoned wrong, the boots with no socks, and the pants looking like they’d been dragged rough. Joel figured nobody was around when the boy left home that morning. If Isabel had been there she’d have arranged his buttons. He wondered what the boy was thinking. Myrna said Emerson liked him. There seemed no sign of it other than he had come out of his hiding place in the aspens when Joel had called him. It was like Joel had a wild shadow near him all the time.
Maybe Isabel and Arnold let Emerson run wild because that’s what he was.
Joel had a dog when he was a kid back in Nakusp. He remembered it showed up one winter starving, its flanks so thin you could have played its twenty-six ribs like a bone guitar. In the beginning he fed it what food he could slip from the house knowing his father would shoot the dog if he knew it was hanging around. It showed up to eat and drink and it slept sometimes on an old crib mattress they’d got from the Crapseys. Missus Crapsey said her birthing days were done when Elsie came out bad. In the end Joel’s father said the dog could stay. There were no more lamb or chicken kills after it arrived. The dog kept the wolves and cougars away. Even the mink and marten steered clear of the farm.
Joel had just called it Dog. To him that’s what it was. “Hey, Dog,” he’d say, and the dog would come to him, its tongue lagging, its eyes soft as butter.
Part boxer, part shepherd, and somewhere in there a breed that might have come from Russia where they bred wolfhounds or so a neighbour had told Joel’s father. Paul Urbanowski was from the Ukraine. He came over to Canada after the war. He knew about such dogs. He said the Ukrainians hunted the Germans with dogs like Joel’s when the Germans were retreating toward Poland. He said they didn’t shoot the Germans they captured. They gave them to the dogs to kill.
The dog he called Dog was always around, following close in the bush when he was hunting willow and blue grouse. The animal knew his whistle. Before they headed home Joel always gave it a kill, a squirrel or rabbit, never a bird. The dog didn’t run in a pack like the game warden’s hunting dogs and it ignored the loose gangs of village dogs when they ran does and fawns in spring. Joel loved Dog, but the animal was its own creature.
Joel thought maybe Emerson was pretty close to being the same as what Dog was. If he was, then there’d be no real knowing of him beyond trust and that was something you didn’t ask for, you couldn’t buy.
Emerson hooked a thumb into a loose belt loop and rubbed his other hand across his mouth, wiping away the grease from his meal. He looked halfway past Joel and said, “That McAllister man unplugged his trailer and took it off the blocks. Pumped up the tires too.”
“What?”
“He hitched his truck.”
Joel sat back on his stool.
Emerson stood where he was, waiting.
* * *
—
ART HELD THE BOTTLE IN HIS TWO HANDS and carefully poured whisky into his glass. It felt good not spilling any. He could still do that. He held the bottle to the moonlight coming through the window by the door. The amber liquor moved in the bottle like stray silk drawn through oil. He lowered the bottle to the floor beside him, holding its neck to make sure it didn’t fall over. The cat lay on his lap, her ears turned back, listening as she always did to Art’s meanderings, the soliloquies that had neither beginning nor en
d.
“It was almost spring and I thought it would always be spring somewhere and wherever it was there would be the sun, but there was no sun in Paris, there was no sun in the Gare Saint-Lazare. It was the last of winter. I wanted spring, but I didn’t want it, because I didn’t want Tommy to die in the spring. I wanted him to die in winter, in Holland. But it was Paris and Tommy would never go back to Holland again. Tommy had forgotten that place.”
“Mon chat, my little one,” he said, his hand resting against the cat’s flank. “Paris was Tommy’s city. I knew it the day I saw him walking past Saint-Séverin, the church they built on a hermit’s grave. Every time I went by that church I wondered at how a simple life can turn into an empty vault made of stones. Saint-Séverin was only a little way from where Marie lived. Marie. Ah, my cat, how long did she live in that little apartment above the café? How long did she live anywhere? A month, two? Another rooming house, a café room, a hotel, another empty space she occupied. Did she really go back to Marseilles? Ever? I don’t know. She said she did. But she didn’t trust me, my little friend. She didn’t trust anyone. And she never told the truth. Her stories changed every time I was on leave with her in Paris. Little things, a detail, a wrong season, the wrong flowers in the vase in Lille, tulips in November, anemones in March. But that first night with her in Paris. What I remember most was the pale blue milk, her asking me to drink from her breasts. Drunk, she called me her baby, her petit. She cradled my head as I suckled her. Sweet, mon chat, a woman’s milk. And the baby? When I asked where it was she told me it was gone. It, not her, not him. Just gone.”