Tears in the Grass

by Lynda A. Archer

  “It would have caused a big argument between us. He would have wanted you to go to the police. I wouldn’t have been able to bear that, even though I would have agreed he was right. They would have hanged you. Poundmaker tried to make peace, gave himself up. What good did it do him? They sent him to jail, in Manitoba, away from his family. He got so sick in there they let him out, so it wouldn’t be on them that he’d died in their jail. There’s no justice for Indians in the white man’s system.”

  Elinor shuffled her shoes over the ground.

  “Did you ever see the wife, the children after that? The children must still be alive.”

  “Never saw them. Actually, that’s not true. I saw them in town once. After she had the baby. I ran so fast the other way. I have thought about finding out where they live now, what they turned into. It wasn’t their fault their father was who he was.” She shook her head. “It was such a horrid time. I couldn’t bear to have anything to do with them.”

  “Did the police talk to you? What did they say about why, how he died?”

  “They didn’t talk to me. I was certain they would. I stayed in the kitchen, outside with the chickens, in the garden, when they came to the house. Maybe they figured I was a dumb Indian. Now, with all the fancy police methods, they’d probably find something in his stomach, figure out he’d ingested a poison.”

  “What did his wife say?”

  “Nothing to me. But her sister came and I heard them talking. The sister said Mrs. Scott — her name was Rebecca — was better off without him. He was a brute. Are you upset?” Louise asked.

  Elinor shoved out her bottom lip. “Too late for that. I am glad that the gulf between us is smaller. How have you lived with it?”

  “With what?”

  “You killed a man.”

  Louise glanced around her. “You don’t have to say it so loudly.”

  “I should shout it.”

  “Mom …”

  “All right, all right. I want to know, how does someone live with that? I’ve never known a person who has done what you did.”

  Louise pressed her lips together and sucked in a breath. There was a commotion near the tour bus, someone shouting. A woman angry with the bus driver about her luggage. She was waving a two-by-four. Louise wondered if she should help, but saw others intervening.

  “How does a person live with that? How did you?”

  “In terror and fear for years. In the belief that I was a horrible person. That it would have been better to let the man rape me. Even get pregnant.”

  “Does John know?”

  Louise shook her head.

  “Probably just as well,” Elinor said. She flung off the blanket, started to stand up, and turned to Louise. “Maybe one day whites and Indians will stop killing each other. You are your mother’s daughter whether you like it or not. If I could have gotten away with it, I would have killed that nun. Not the man who raped me; at least something good came of that. But that nun, the one who stole my child, I have never forgiven her.” Elinor patted Louise’s hands, smiled into her face. “Let’s go home, have some tea.”

  “Yes, let’s do that.” Louise folded the blanket, slipped her arm into her mother’s.

  “You’ve been very quiet tonight,” John said, dropping his glasses on the newspaper. “Everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine,” Louise said. She lowered her law journal to her lap. “We played bingo this afternoon.”

  “How was that?”

  “Enjoyable.”

  “Win anything?”

  “A set of coasters.”

  “I see. We already have several sets, don’t we?”

  “We do. After bingo we sat in the park near the airport.”

  “Did Elinor like that?”

  “I think she did. I think she was content.”

  “So, it was good all around.”

  “It was. Mind you, for a moment it was a bit chaotic.” Louise slid the journal onto the side table, swung her legs from the footstool.

  “What happened?”

  “A tour bus pulled up while we were in the gardens. One of the passengers, a woman, went after the bus driver with a two-by-four. The police came pretty quickly, took her away.”

  “Strange. You don’t expect that kind of thing from a woman. Wonder what her problem was? What did Elinor say?”

  “She didn’t see it. And I didn’t tell her.”

  John nodded and grunted. He switched off his reading lamp, said he had an early morning. He asked if Louise was coming to bed; she said she had more reading to get through for the next day. He kissed her on the forehead and shuffled from the room. His knees are bothering him again, Louise thought.

  Louise leaned back into her chair and closed her eyes. She could never tell John what she had done. As much as she hated keeping things from him, she didn’t see what good it would do. Maybe she was making excuses for herself. Maybe she feared his anger. Or she wanted to spare him. John being John, he would be deeply upset with and for her. Her deepest regret was that Ian Scott’s children grew up fatherless. Perhaps Sarah had remarried. And Ian Scott being the man who he was, maybe Sarah and the children were better off without him.

  In the early years of her law practice, every time she had a new client with the name Scott she’d get nervous, wonder if they were related, if the death of Ian Scott would come out somehow. Her mind circled round to John’s comment about the woman with the two-by-four, that such things weren’t expected from women. She chuckled, picked up her law journal. The things people didn’t allow for women.

  There’s talk, I heard them the other day, of a renovation.

  Upgrading, making things more modern.

  I didn’t like the way the man, a young fellow, looked in my direction.

  As if I wouldn’t be necessary in the new museum.

  As if I was little more than a mangy, extinct creature.

  Another time I might have been upset, but this being stuffed in a museum for years, it’s like a second dying. The only thing that made it bearable were the visits from the old Indian woman.

  And she’ll not be back.

  39

  In the valley the snow had receded, except in deep crotches where wolf willow and silverbush grew. Winter had come early and stayed late. So thickly and persistently had the snow fallen, birds didn’t fly, schools and highways were closed, and roofs collapsed from the weight of the snow. Creatures unable to forage through the deep drifts starved. For weeks, bitter cold clenched the thermometer like a fist, keeping the mercury at the bottom of the glass tube. No town, village, hamlet, field, lake, or stream in the province was spared.

  Meteorologists said it had been the worst winter in decades.

  Louise and Alice strode in silence up the side of the low, grassy hill. The past few months, they’d taken to walking together; no formal arrangement, just a tacit agreement that each honoured.

  Within days of Louise’s disclosure about Ian Scott, Elinor died. She went to sleep one night and didn’t wake up. She’d been especially cheery that day. When Louise thought about it later, she figured her mother knew it was her last day.

  Victoria had stayed for two weeks. When the initial excitement waned, it was awkward for a time. So many questions. Questions that stirred anger, sadness, and grief. Who was Victoria’s father? Why had Elinor not searched for her child sooner? What did it mean for Victoria that she was half-Indian? What had her family told her about Indians? Alice took Victoria to Elinor’s house in the valley. Alice had wondered if it made Victoria uncomfortable, to learn that she’d been rescued, spared such an impoverished existence. But Victoria remained gracious and grateful for all that she was offered. The last few days of the visit, Victoria and Elinor were with each other constantly; neither expressed a desire to do anything or go anywhere. They seemed content to linger in each other’s presence, watching the fish swim back and forth across the pond, the yellow creeping around the edges of the leaves, a hairy caterpillar inching a
long the garden path. Louise and Alice marvelled that Bright Eyes had been found, that Elinor hadn’t died before having the chance to meet her.

  At the station, waiting for Victoria’s train, Louise had seen the adoration in Elinor’s eyes. And she saw Victoria’s attentiveness to Elinor. Louise wondered if Victoria would have been the daughter Elinor had always wanted. Louise vowed to herself to be more attentive to her own children, to mend the rifts, to receive them for who they were.

  Louise, hands clasped behind her back, turned to take in the view of where they had come from. Alice’s truck was a miniature at the side of the road. Beyond the truck a tributary of the Qu’Appelle almost overflowed its banks. Ancient willows, their wispy leaves the fresh green of spring, flung their branches over the bursting waters.

  They walked along the crest of the hill, the wind blowing into their faces, the scent of cow manure wafting toward them from a farm below. A tractor clawed over an open field; a car, a plume of dust behind it, climbed up and out of the valley.

  A large white cloud mass blocked the sun. Louise pulled her jacket tighter around her body and did up the buttons. They tromped into a coulee, following a narrow path left by deer and coyote, then up the flank of the next hill, along the crest, down and up again. Here and there in quiet affirmation of the arrival of spring, patches of crocus had bloomed. Furry purple blossoms, low to the earth, keeping themselves out of the prairie winds.

  When they came up against a fence with black-and-white cattle on the other side of it, they turned around, headed down, strode along the road for about a mile. The wind had picked up and it blew hard on Louise’s face, into her ears. She covered her ears with her hands; she’d not brought a hat.

  The wind whipped Alice’s long hair across her mouth and into her eyes. She turned away from the blast and walked backwards, facing her mother. When she lost her balance and almost tripped, she twirled around and ran hard to the truck.

  Louise picked up her pace and walked more briskly. She was warm enough and found the cold air invigorating after a long week in the courthouse. She had bumped into one of Alice’s high-school friends; she had a babe in arms, a ring on her finger. The girl asked after Alice, told Louise to have Alice call her. When Louise told Alice about Marnie, Alice shrugged and was noncommittal about whether she would call. Louise had observed that Alice spent much of her free time, vacations and weekends, with her friend Wanda; they seemed very close. She wondered if Alice would ever marry; she’d not had a boyfriend in a few years. She supposed that was all right; some women never did marry.

  Alice started the truck, turned the fan on high to clear the frost from the windows. She rubbed her hands briskly together then shoved them under her thighs. The warm air crept up from the bottom of the windshield, sculpting long curves and arcs in the white frost. Her mother, hands over her ears, a half-block from the truck, was walking fast. Alice waved, but her mother didn’t return the wave. Alice wondered if her mother missed Elinor. For so much of their lives, the two had been irritated with each other. Since Victoria’s visit, her mother seemed calmer, quieter, less argumentative. Maybe there’d come a time when she’d be able to tell her about Wanda. She reached across and opened the door.

  Hands pressed around the small red plastic tumblers filled with hot tea, they stared forward, following the long run of the gravel road until it curved toward the valley and the river. The truck shook with a blast of wind. Louise chuckled. Alice turned to her mother, asked what was funny. Louise smiled, said she imagined that gust of wind had been Elinor, reminding them that she wasn’t far away, that she’d always be with them.

  Alice nodded and smiled. “I like that idea. Do you think of her much? Do you miss her?”

  Louise peered into the black tea. “Oh yes. I’m surprised how often I think of her. I regret that we spent so many years apart.” She fell silent for a time. “It’s been good to walk with you.”

  “Yes, I agree.” Alice swallowed the last of her tea, turned the mug on the top of the Thermos.

  They drove for several miles over gravelled back roads, up and down low hills, past solitary farmhouses with caragana hedges, yards filled with trucks and trailers, rusted red farm machinery, green John Deere tractors ready to move into the fields in the next month. They drove in silence. From the radio, a Mozart flute concerto, then a Rachmaninoff sonata. Eventually, they came to the Trans-Canada Highway and turned west. Louise said it wasn’t the way home and asked where they were going. Alice said she’d see soon enough.

  Louise recalled her confession to her mother. The yellows, purples, and reds of the flowers — silent witnesses to her dastardly deed. She recalled the frailness, and the feistiness, of her mother. She understood, in a way she never had before, the requirement that those found guilty of a crime should stand before a judge and a court and confess their crime. Tell the world what they had done. No more denial, lying, or hiding. I killed, I raped, I stole …

  Alice thought of Wanda. She regretted she’d not told Elinor about her, that there had been only one brief meeting between the two. She lamented that the two people she adored had not been able to know each other. She hated that her affection and amour for Wanda made her uncomfortable, that she struggled with her desires, that she anticipated only disapproval and disdain from others. Love is never wrong. Her gran would have told her that.

  Alice turned from the highway onto a dusty grid road.

  Two or three miles ahead, buildings, as if they had pushed up out of the prairie like mushrooms, huddled on both sides of the road. They crawled through the village. The municipal roadway was the main and only street in the town. Within the space of two or three city blocks, passing the post office, the Co-op and hotel, general store, and ten or twelve homes, most two-storey and painted white, they had traversed from one end of the town to the other.

  Alice pulled up in front of the last building before the prairie resumed, a squat white stucco structure with black trim.

  “What’s this?” Louise asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  Once through the door they were immediately in a single, brightly lit, white-walled room, large, but not overly so. In the centre of the room, two shiny pine benches, a rocking chair, blankets, and pillows. The walls were covered with paintings and drawings of various sizes and shapes. Most were the traditional rectangular form, but some were small squares, others circular.

  Louise remained still for a moment before moving closer to the artwork. In silence, she examined one, then another and another. A pencil sketch of a deer at the edge of a coulee. An ink drawing of the valley. A perfect oil painting, six by eight inches, of the valley in summer, fluffy white clouds mirrored in the long lake. More drawings in pencil. Her father with the smile Louise knew so well. Louise, at eight or nine perhaps, hair halfway down her back, crouching by a boulder.

  “Where did you get these?” Louise asked.

  “Went through Gran’s cottage. She had things stuffed everywhere. We should have done something sooner, so she could have seen them all.”

  Shifting slowly to her right, Louise studied the drawings and paintings.

  “What gave you this idea?” Louise asked.

  “When I took Victoria to the cottage, she was enthralled by Gran’s work, said it should be hung somewhere. So I started to think about that.”

  Louise stepped closer to a sketch of a circle of tipis beside a stream, then stood back. She studied the work on the first wall, then the second and the third. After she had looked at the last painting, she went around again. Closer, then dropping back, close again. When finally she settled on one of the benches, Alice joined her. Together they viewed the largest painting in the collection. Done in oil, tones of buff, slate, and blue, with patches of yellow and burnt orange, it was a long view of the valley, a huge expanse of sky and the dark waters at the valley floor. Along the lower perimeter of the painting, if one looked closely, there were eyes, round and ovoid; ears, small, tall, and pointed; and snouts of varying dimensi
ons. Near the water’s edge a cluster of tipis, a few horses, and a wooden horse-drawn wagon with a man and young child inside.

  Louise strolled around the room again. This had been her life.

  Eventually, she stopped at the grouping of older sketches. Smudged and torn, they showed Louise’s family — crouched at a fire, picking berries, sad old men, children, their faces filled with laughter.

  “These ones were done on the reserve before I left. I remember Mother working at them. I remember …”

  Louise talked for a long while. Alice listened.

  At the window of the tiny gallery, Elinor watched and smiled.

  On the prairie, grasses were poking through the dark soil, earthworms were tunnelling.

  And the wind blew.

  Acknowledgements

  Many people stayed the course with this book, and I am hugely grateful to them all. The students and faculty of the MFA Program in Writing at Spalding University, Kentucky, have been, and continue to be, nothing short of amazing in their support and nurturing of my literary efforts. Special thanks to Julie Brickman for her guidance in the novel workshop and for years of encouragement. Roy Hoffman, Mary Yukari Waters, Robin Lippincott, and Neela Vaswani, mentors extraordinaire, read early drafts and provided insightful feedback. Karen Mann did a comprehensive read of a later draft for which I am most appreciative.

  Special recognition goes to Frances Hanna (1944–2011), literary agent, who believed in the book from the get-go. Bill Hanna continues in that capacity.

  Thanks to Allison Hirst, my editor at Dundurn, for her thoroughness, and to the Dundurn design department for a beautiful cover.

  Others who guided me along the long and winding road include Deirdre Gainor, Marie Schommer, Michelle Benjamin, Maria Tuchscherer, Debra Shogan, Gloria Filax, and Shirley Routliffe.

  Many people, and sources, aided me in researching and writing this book. In particular, I wish to acknowledge the following: The Online Cree Dictionary (www.creedictionary.com); Our Grandmothers’ Lives As Told in Their Own Words, Freda Ahenakew and H.C. Wolfart; Treaty Promises, Indian Reality, Harold Lerat with Linda Ungar; Plain Speaking: Essays on Aboriginal Peoples and the Prairie, P. Douaud and Bruce Dawson; A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood, Kim Anderson. And for my Big Brown character, Tom McHugh’s The Time of the Buffalo.