After River

by Donna Milner

  ‘Is there a line?’ I asked.

  ‘Line?’

  ‘Like on the map?’

  ‘No, it’s an imaginary line that divides us.’ He smiled. ‘Are the people there different?’

  ‘Well, there are certainly a lot more of them. But they’re pretty much the same. We’re fortunate to have them there,’ he added. ‘It’s kind of like living next door to a big brother.’

  ‘Like you,’ I smiled.

  ‘Something like that,’ he said and hugged me.

  Boyer showed me how to locate South Valley Road in the shadows of Gold Mountain and Robert’s Peak. Anyone turning off the main highway onto that winding dirt road was either lost, or coming to our farm. Or both.

  As Boyer pointed out the boundaries of our land he told about how our grandfather had arrived in the area after the first rush of gold fever. ‘It didn’t take him long to realize that prospecting wasn’t for him,’ he said. ‘So he decided to make his living from the miners, instead of with them.’

  Our grandfather bought two Holstein cows and a bull. Then he began his return to what he knew best, dairy farming. He home-steaded the only usable acreage in the narrow valley south of town. He also laid claim to a good deal of the surrounding hillsides and forests. Four hundred acres of hill and dale, rock and dirt.

  ‘More hill than dale, and more rock than dirt,’ I heard my father joke more than a few times.

  Even when I grew too heavy to ride on Boyer’s shoulders I tagged along with him whenever he went hiking. Morgan and Carl often joined us. He taught my brothers and me how to use the sun and the evening stars to guide ourselves home. ‘There’s no need to lose your way in these hills,’ Boyer assured us. ‘If you ever do, just climb higher until you can look down and see something familiar.’

  As Boyer shared his love of the forest he constantly reminded us of the hidden dangers in the mountains that toed into our fields and meadows. Both he and our mother made sure we did not forget.

  One summer day, when I was five or six, Morgan and Carl and I went with Mom to pick wild huckleberries that grew in the forest behind our farm.

  My mother’s blue flowered cotton dress swished against her black rubber boots as she walked in front of me. Mom always wore a dress, even in the bush. My father hated to see her in pants.

  ‘Ya look ridiculous,’ I heard him exclaim one winter morning when she emerged from the bedroom in a pair of his woollen trousers. ‘I’m sorry, Nettie,’ he said when he saw her crestfallen face. ‘But it’s such a shock to see those beautiful legs covered up.’ During my childhood I never saw her wear pants again.

  Sunlight seeped through the canopy of trees and danced through the branches as we hiked up the mountain that day. The air smelled of dry leaves, mossy bark, and dust. Mom jingled as she moved. Christmas bells, from the horse’s halter, hung around her neck. ‘We’re in bear territory now,’ she told us.

  ‘Bears!’ I shrieked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Morgan chimed in. ‘We’re gonna get eaten by bears.’

  Mom ignored Morgan and Carl’s laughter. ‘Bears don’t eat people,’ she said to me. ‘They eat berries. Still we don’t want to surprise them.’ She lifted the bells and gave them a shake. ‘We’ve got to give them fair warning.’

  She promised the noise would be enough to keep the bears away. I believed her. But then I believed every word she said.

  I followed close behind her, my red lard bucket swinging. My brothers and I ate more of the fat blue huckleberries than we put into our buckets. A few small berries rolled around the bottom of my tin pail, making lonely hollow sounds that were no match for my mother’s jangling bells.

  I tried to swing my hips, to swish my skirt across the top of my calves, the way Mom’s did. My feet became tangled. I tripped over my heavy boots and tumbled to the ground. My pail flew out of my hand and the few berries I’d gathered scattered onto the forest floor. My awkward sprawl sent Morgan and Carl into shrills of laughter. ‘Look at Nat. She’s gibbled,’ they shrieked.

  Neither of my brothers wanted to be there. They wanted to be with Boyer and Dad who were cutting trees for our winter’s firewood. ‘In such a hurry to be men,’ my mother chastised them earlier that morning when they tried to talk their way out of going berrypicking.

  They were bored with searching for berries; their laughter lasted longer than my unceremonious stumble warranted. ‘Well that should keep any bears away,’ Mom said. She helped me up, my spilled berries too scattered to retrieve. ‘You two sound like a couple of braying jackasses.’

  Hearing the word ‘ass’ come out of her mouth only set Morgan and Carl off into another frenzy. They laughed and poked at each other as we entered a clearing in the sweltering afternoon sunshine. Clicking grasshoppers leapt from the dry overgrown alpine grass as we passed through. Wisps of steam rose like smoke from the black, moisture-laden tree stumps scattered across the hillside.

  Back in the cool shadows on the other side, the musty odour of dried lichen and crushed pine needles filled the forest air. In the shade of the overhead trees we came upon a dense stand of bushes, their branches heavy with the purple-blue huckleberries.

  ‘Now, try to get some in your buckets,’ Mom told us.

  The four of us slowly worked our way through the patch. Even I managed to cover the bottom of my pail. The bushes thinned out as we moved further into the trees. I followed Mom as she meandered back along the edge of the clearing.

  Suddenly, Morgan and Carl started to holler. I glanced up to see them scrambling over a mound of rubble, an enormous pile of weathered tree stumps and boulders, overgrown with weeds and vines.

  My mother stopped picking and called out, ‘Come down from there.’ She beckoned me to follow her to the bottom of the pile where she stood and waited for them to descend.

  My brothers groaned, then reluctantly backed down. When they reached the bottom Morgan stood back and looked at the heap of tangled debris. ‘What is it Mom?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ she said as she ushered us away.

  We walked a short distance when Mom stopped and set her pail on the ground. She sat down on a moss-crusted log and stared back at the mountain of rubble as if she could see something we could not. ‘It’s really your father’s story,’ she said. She removed the bells from her neck. In the blinking light of the forest she began to speak matter-of-factly, without emotion. I still remember her words.

  ‘It happened in 1927,’ she began. ‘After the milking was done one fall morning, your father, and his older brother, Emile, headed out with their dog to hunt grouse. Your dad was twelve; Emile was fifteen. It wasn’t unusual for the boys to hunt alone. Your grandfather, Angus Ward, taught them early how to handle guns. The same way he taught them to drive the truck and farm equipment when they were still just boys. Things were different back then. Necessity and competency were the only licence they needed.’

  The background drone of insects accompanied my mother’s voice. ‘Grouse hunting was half sport and half serious business. The boys usually returned home with an abundance of birds hanging at their sides, the tiny wings falling open, limp and useless. Their mother, your grandmother Manny, was always pleased to receive their bounty. She plucked and cleaned the small, thick-chested birds with relish, happy for a change from the chicken or beef that filled the platters on their kitchen table each night.

  ‘But as the sun rose above the tree tops that morning, their dog, a blue healer, had little success flushing out their prey. He zigzagged haltingly, sniffing, and whining, through the dew-wet undergrowth. The brothers followed him further up the slopes. The sun grew warmer. They still had no birds tied to their belts.

  ‘When the boys came to an old clear-cut – that clearing we just walked through – the dog ran ahead. Your father turned for only a moment to look down at the farm.

  ‘Behind him the dog gave a bark of discovery and bolted across the clearing. Your father spun around and saw the startled eyes of a young doe. She stood motionles
s against the backdrop of tree trunks and branches. Then with a flash of white tail she leapt into the underbrush, flushing a covey of grouse as she disappeared. The birds rose in a whirr of flapping wings. Emile lifted his rifle and fired. A wounded bird hung in the air, and then fought against the descent into the thicket. The blue healer bounded into the bush, with Emile close behind. Your dad took up the chase. He knew his brother, an expert with a shotgun, would not miss if he got a second shot. He followed them into the forest. In the shadows of the trees he spotted their dog as it leaped through the air above a funguscovered snag. Emile ran ten feet behind, changing his shells on the fly; he thumbed a fresh shell into position and snapped the gun shut as he ran toward the deadfall. In the next blink Emile was gone. Gus thought the flickering light was playing tricks with his eyes. He raced toward the log. He saw the gaping hole at his feet just in time. He threw himself to one side, his fingers clawing at brambles and roots as his feet slid on wet grass.’

  Mom took a deep breath. ‘Oh, what sounds for a young boy to carry with him into the rest of his life,’ she sighed. She was no longer speaking to us. ‘Those sounds, the commotion, all melded into a single moment: the muffled thuds of flesh against unyielding rock, the receding scream, the dog’s furious barking, the clatter of the falling gun, and finally the gun shot, the thunderous shot ricocheting, echoing, in the depths of the air shaft at your father’s feet.

  ‘Then the ringing silence. A silence broken only when the blue healer raised his head to howl to the heavens.’

  She told us how, half blind with tears and shock, Dad raced, stumbled, and fell his way down the mountainside. Covered in blood and dirt he made his way home. Deafened by the pounding in his ears, gulping each breath as if it were his last, he could not hear his own voice as he told his parents the unbearable news.

  Mom said it took the rescue party, led by my shell-shocked father, until nightfall to retrieve his brother’s twisted, lifeless, body. My grandfather himself rappelled down the shaft to carry his son to the surface.

  Manny Ward stood in the clearing, apart from the rescue party, stiffening at any attempts of comfort. Her clutched fists bulged in her apron pockets; her thin mouth an expressionless line on her tearless face. She stared straight ahead as the afternoon sunlight passed over the scene; the moving shadows the only marking of time as she waited for her son’s body.

  ‘Your father stood in shock and watched it all as if from underwater,’ Mom said, ‘from another world, a world of silence. He remembered seeing mouths open and close, but heard no words.’

  ‘It took years for him to make his way to the surface,’ she added. ‘Dad did it alone. His parents offered no words of comfort, no lifeline, so deeply were they drowning in their own sorrow.

  ‘For months after, your grandfather spent every free moment of his time carting boulders and felled trees to throw down that mine shaft. He didn’t stop when it was full. He piled more on the top, creating this rock and wood memorial for his first-born son,’ my mother mused, then added, ‘a memorial that looks like a funeral pyre waiting for a match.’

  My grandfather continued to search for and fill, or board over, every mine shaft he could find on his land. When he had exhausted his four hundred acres he started on the neighbours’ land. Neither my grandfather, nor my father, ever picked up a shotgun again.

  I never heard my father speak of his brother, or say anything to us about mineshafts. Perhaps he felt that his father had taken care of them and there was no longer any danger. Still, our mother warned us that day, ‘Even your grandfather couldn’t be sure he’d found them all.’

  It’s hard to be certain now how much of the story was actually told by my mother, and how much is my memory filling in the blanks. I only know her words painted a picture so clear it was as if I were watching it play out before me. I saw and heard the tragedy of that long-ago autumn day. But I was only a child then, the sorrow and pain of broken hearts were concepts in fairytales. The sadness lasted as long as the telling. Suffering and grief were not part of that sunshine time of our lives. They were something that happened to others, not to our perfect family.

  Chapter Eleven

  ON A SEPTEMBER afternoon, when I was eight, I came into the kitchen after digging potatoes to find my mother and father at the table with a young man I’d never seen before.

  I placed the bowl of dirt-covered spuds in the sink, rinsed my hands, then dried them while I stood behind my mother peering over her shoulder. An array of black-and-white photographs, all about the size of my school scribblers, was spread out on the table in front of her. The enlarged photographs were overhead shots of our farm, and one of the entire town of Atwood, taken from an airplane.

  As I looked closer at the pictures I experienced a twinge of vertigo. I sat down beside Mom and studied the photographs. I could make out the landmark stone and brick buildings: the post office, the courthouse, even Our Lady of Compassion, School for Girls, next door to the hospital. The town looked neat and orderly from this birds-eye view. It looked nothing like the hodgepodge menagerie of steep-roofed houses that hung on the hillsides.

  I was surprised by how flat everything looked. The mountains and forests, the steep winding roads and streets, were rendered harmless by the camera’s overhead eye. How perfectly nestled into the valley our home site appeared, as if my grandfather had been guided by a divine plan when he carved out the four hundred acres.

  The eager-eyed young salesman watched as we scrutinized the pictures. ‘The finished portrait will be hand painted by a water-colourist,’ he said as he reached for a huckleberry tart from the full plate in front of him.

  No one ever entered our kitchen without staying for the next meal, or at least sitting down for tea and whatever baked goodies sat on top of the large wooden sideboard in the corner of the kitchen. I think my mother would have been horrified if ever anyone left her home without something made by her hand sloshing around in his belly. Family, friends, or strays, they were all treated the same. Hikers and huckleberry pickers, priests and Jehovah’s Witnesses, would be invited in to break bread if they showed up at our door. Even the members of the small Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment often stopped by on evening patrols to share one of my mother’s late-night snacks. Travelling salesmen: the Fuller Brush man, the Watkin’s man, and the Avon lady, all choked back my mother’s black-as-tar tea – ‘panther-piss’, Morgan and Carl called it – if they wanted a chance at a sale.

  Not many went away without at least a small order. There was always some ointment, creme, brush, or bottle of fruit syrup that was just as easy to buy from these wandering mail-order catalogues. Of course, it helped if Mother liked them. And how she liked a good talker. I think this dying breed of door-to-door peddlers entertained her as much as the black-and-white television set in the corner of the living room.

  The young salesman at the end of the table that day did not measure up. But it didn’t matter. I could see in my mother’s eyes that she would have one of these painted aerial portraits no matter how bad the sales pitch. My father too was intrigued, but I could tell by the way his cigarette migrated back and forth, from one corner of his mouth to the other, that he was going to play a bartering game.

  At the end of the table the salesman took a slurp of tea, then looked over the porcelain mug and asked, ‘Ever seen your home from the air?’ A smear of purple huckleberry tart hung at the corner of his mouth.

  Certainly neither of my parents had ever been in an aeroplane, but both – though father was trying hard not to show it – were fascinated by the pictures spread out on the table. Mom leaned over them; she ran her fingers slowly, lightly, almost reverently, down the roads, over the fields, without touching the paper. She held her other hand to her chest as if she were having trouble breathing.

  ‘It looks so beautiful,’ she crooned. ‘So beautiful.’ Her fingers found the house, the barn, and the dairy. ‘Everything seems so close. Oh, look Natalie, you can see the lake, the old miner’s cabin
.’

  My father leaned forward for a quick glance, trying hard to put on his stern, in-control face. Even to my young scrutinizing eyes, he failed.

  ‘So. How much?’ he asked.

  ‘Well,’ said the salesman, with the confidence of someone who knew that a sale was in the bag. ‘That all depends on size and framing. The portrait size—’

  ‘How long?’ my mother blurted.

  ‘Pardon, ma’am?’

  ‘How long will it take to paint, frame, and deliver the large portrait size?’

  My father coughed, ‘Now wait a minute, Nettie,’ he said. ‘We haven’t decided anything yet. Let’s just hear the prices first. Probably cost an arm and a leg.’

  Mom was the most patient person I know, but when she made up her mind on something she expected action. She was a worker, a doer, and she thrived on concrete results. Still, she seldom went against Dad, and certainly never in front of a stranger. But she had made up her mind to have this portrait and in that made-up mind I imagined she could already see it hanging in a place of honour above the piano. I saw the determination in the way she sat up and squared her shoulders.

  The salesman looked helplessly from Dad to Mom.

  Then I saw it in her eyes. The briefest flicker, a movement, a flash, there, then gone. In that fraction of a second she told him, without saying a word, where the sale rested.

  ‘Well, Mr Ward sir, let’s see,’ the salesman said as he pulled out a letter-size sheet of paper from a flat leather folder. ‘Here we are.’ He passed it down to my father. ‘The price list. The sizes, descriptions, all the prices are there.’

  My father crushed out his cigarette and put on his reading glasses. He picked up the paper and leaned back, the chair creaking in protest as the front legs lifted off the floor. The clock over the stove ticked into the silence as my father pondered. After a few moments he laid the paper flat on the table and smoothed it with his hands. Mom’s eyes followed his fingers down the list. As he touched each description, I saw her shrug her shoulders as if indifferent to the selection. When he reached the last line, she gave the briefest of nods.