The Englishman’s Boy

by Guy Vanderhaeghe

  Every once in a while I cast Damon Ira Chance a surreptitious glance. Throughout the picture he sits absolutely still, flat cap laid primly on the coat folded over his knees. He sits that way through the buffalo hunt, the Indian attack, the settlers falling to their knees in the snows of Oregon to give thanks, never moving a muscle until the last frames of the picture when he rises and taps me imperiously on the arm, a sign to follow him out.

  Here and there, under streetlamps, young men with brilliantined hair are smoking and eyeing girls who strut by holding themselves sexlessly erect like models on a runway, only to collapse sexily against one another, whispering and giggling, once they have steamed by these islands of maleness and light.

  Chance walks quickly, face set. Whoever he meets on the sidewalk, man or woman, has to step aside or risk collision. He simply doesn’t see them. Every few steps he takes, a hand flies up to his spectacles like a gadget on an assembly line, and jams them into his face, hard. With my bad leg, it is an effort to keep up. We go along like this for five or six blocks when he stops suddenly, grasps my shoulder, drags me closer. “Facts are of the utmost importance, Harry. If I can convince the audience the details are impeccably correct, who will dispute the interpretation? The truth of small things leads to confidence in the truth of large things. That is indisputable.” He looks at me anxiously, chewing his bottom lip. “ ‘The blood of America is the blood of pioneers – the blood of lion-hearted men and women who carved a splendid civilization out of an uncharted wilderness,’ ” he intones contemptuously. “Recognize it? It’s one of the titles from the picture we just saw. As soon as people start piously throwing around the word civilization, you can be sure they’re whistling in the dark. Civilization has always drawn enemies like rotten meat draws flies. I hate the word.”

  Two girls are walking toward us, flapper dresses moving provocatively in the dusk like Victorian shifts glimpsed by gaslight. They lean together, deep in private conversation, and when they go by, one of them laughs, a low bubbling laugh like the cooing of a pigeon.

  Chance follows them with his eyes, his hand tightens on my shoulder. He leans into me as the girls lean into one another. “They were laughing at me,” he says, “because of how I am dressed. Details again, Harry. Details are how most people read the world, the simple letters of their idiotic alphabet. They spell crude and literal meanings such as ‘clothes make the man.’ Most people don’t have what you and I do, Harry.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The gift to see beyond a flat cap, or beyond small facts.”

  I can see how tired he is, his face looks jaundiced in the lamplight. He presses his shoulder to the lamppost and lifts his face to the light. It looks exhausted, drained. I follow his staring eyes to a delirium of moths whirling thickly around the electric light. Like the details chasing around in his head.

  “Start work on the scenario, Harry,” he says.

  23

  Grace finally persuaded an old woman, Granny Laverdure, to cook them their Sunday dinner. She led them off to her son-in-law’s cabin, one of the most substantial in the Métis settlement. The logs were peeled and soundly chinked with clay, the walls standing twelve timbers high and set with three small windows of scraped fawn skin which shed a soft, tawny light into the quarters. Most impressive was a waterproof roof, canvas stretched over poles and topped with squares of sod.

  “Snug as a bug in a rug,” Grace pronounced when he dipped his gangly frame through the low doorway.

  The Englishman’s boy had to give the breeds their due. The cabin was stout as his own Pap’s. Except the breeds had a cast-iron stove where he and his kin had done their cooking and roasting in a fireplace chimbley. The breeds ate at a table, on benches, too; no Indian squat when they took meat. The floor was packed dirt swept with a spruce bough, you could smell spruce in the air and see the scrape-marks of the branch left in the dirt.

  Along the walls more benches served as beds, piled high with Hudson’s Bay blankets, buffalo robes, grizzly skins; two youngsters sat on one of these, cheeks bulging as they chewed with frantic intensity.

  Close to the iron stove, a few shelves holding flour, tea, a little dried fruit, roots, and meat were pegged into the wall. In a corner where a bitch lamp burned there was even a picture; he could see it from where he sat. One of them Cat-licker Jesus pictures. Him prying his chest open and showing his heart on fire.

  He and Ed made easy at the table drinking boiled tea, black as coffee, while Granny clattered at the stove. A little twig of a girl of two, with gold rings in her ears, Rose Marie, stood clinging to the table leg, watching Grace wide-eyed. Every time he winked at her, she hugged the table leg all the harder.

  “Those six bottles’ll be gone in an hour,” said Grace. “I spent a winter with those lads and experience has taught me liquor doesn’t lighten their dispositions. Put a pint of liquor in any one of them and they’re apt to turn quarrelsome. They’ll be fighting each other before the day goes out – or anybody else who’s handy. I’d just as soon not be handy. No, we’re better off where we are, drinking strong tea out of harm’s way.”

  The Englishman’s boy couldn’t take his eyes off the two kids on the bench, jaws working like steam locomotives.

  “Goddamn, Eagle,” he said, “what them boys over there chewing? They’re making my head hurt watching them.”

  “Over there,” said Grace, squinting across the room, “is the ammunition manufactory. You know that lead foil the tea packets come wrapped in? They chew it to make bullets for their Northwest guns. A Métis kid’ll spit round shot for a five-eighths-inch bore like it came from a bullet mould.”

  The smell of elk steaks frying and bannock baking put a glow of contentment and goodwill on the Eagle. He stretched his legs out comfortably under the table. “I tell you, son, once I lay hands on my share of that wolfing money I’m heading for the Red River country. This Whoop-Up country’s too wild for me. A betwixt-and-betweener prefers things by halves. Half-wild country. Half-wild women. I reckon those Red River women fit the bill. Half-French, half-Cree. Half-housebroke and half-wild, half-pagan and half-Catholic. I like a roof over me and a good bed under me, but on the other hand I’d sooner shoot my meat than raise it. I like to turn footloose in the summer when the sun shines and nest in a cabin in the winter when the wind blows cold and the snow flies. And those gals are handsome women, some light-skinned as any white women, and a few even have curl to their hair, or blue to the eye. I believe they’d suit me just fine.”

  The food was ready. The boys hopped down off the bunk and put their feet under the table. Granny said grace and everybody but the Eagle and the Englishman’s boy crossed themselves, even the baby. They all set to with a will and an appetite, piling their tin plates with elk steaks and a stew of buffalo and wild parsnip. Everybody had a side bowl of boiled and sweetened saskatoons for bannock dipping and as much scalding-hot tea as they could drink.

  In a bit, the Eagle had coaxed the little girl up on his lap and was spooning food into her from his plate. Soon she was clambering all over him like a squirrel, patting the bandanna on his head with her chubby hands.

  “ Aimez-vous, the pirate? Aimez-vous, the pirate?” he squawked at her. When she tried to speak French to him, he made a droll, rubbery face and said, “No comprenez-vous.” Every time he reiterated this, she laughed louder and harder than the last time.

  It wasn’t long until he had a game of “creep mousie” going with the child, cautiously stealing his fingers up her arms, breathing, “Creep mousie, creep mousie, creep mousie,” into her ear, and then with a sudden cry of “Right in there!” burying a finger in her armpit, tickling her until she squealed loud enough to raise the roof.

  Then, suddenly, he stopped the game dead, finger poised. An apparition darkened the doorway. The Englishman’s boy made an involuntary movement to the pistol at his side, but the Eagle caught his hand. “No,” he said, pulling the child protectively to his chest.

  The figure in the doo
rway was sniffing the air, swaying, grunting to himself softly. He shambled a few steps into the cabin and halted.

  The Englishman’s boy had never dreamed himself such a bogey man as this. The bogey man had shaved the top of his head bald and rolled the hair on his temples into balls so they resembled bear ears. His face was painted blood-red and down each cheek the paint had been scratched away to the skin, leaving claw-marks. The eyes and mouth were circled in black and a bear-claw necklace swung from his neck. His skin shirt was daubed thickly with ochre and hung in bedraggled yellow shreds; long cuts slashed the front, and holes were punched the length of the sleeves.

  Now his face was lifted to the ceiling and he was casting back and forth with his nose, the way the bear does when it rises on its hind legs to take the wind for danger. He lowered his head and shuffled toward them, grunting.

  “He got a knife in his hand,” warned the Englishman’s boy. The knife was broad-bladed, double-edged, and fixed into the jawbone of a bear.

  Grace signalled him by dropping his eyes to something beneath the table. The Englishman’s boy caught his meaning. Grace’s pistol hung between his knees.

  The bear stalked around the old woman’s chair. His nightmare face descended to the part in her grey hair, snuffled the hollow of her wrinkled neck. She sat like a stone. He stalked over to the boys, scented each of them in turn, panted huh, huh, huh.

  When he swung clumsily towards the Englishman’s boy, the boy said loudly, “You ain’t sniffing me, you bastard.”

  The bear stood swaying, then jerked and rolled his shoulders so the distinctive hump of the grizzly rose up menacingly on his back under the torn shirt. The Englishman’s boy did his best to stare him off like a dog, but these weren’t the eyes of a dog. They were the black fierce lights of the bear the Indians called the real-bear, the grizzly, beside which all other bears were nothing. This was the bear that broke the body of the hunter in the bushes, killed the women and children when he found them stealing in his berry patch; this was the bear who crushed your bones as easily as he did the bones of a salmon, who tore your guts with his claws. This was the bear with the great hunger, the bear who, in his rage, could eat the world, all its fruits, all its fish, all its flesh.

  And he was in the room with them.

  “Yes, you will,” said Grace quietly. “You will let him sniff you.”

  The bear came forward, the vermilion on his face shining with grease, the charcoal eyes and mouth shafts leading into some terrible inner darkness, a darkness out of which he groaned hollowly, out of which he laboured to walk on his hind legs, like a man.

  Then he was in the Englishman’s boy’s face, inches from it. The boy could smell meat on the panting breath, smell the bear grease twisted up in the balls of hair on either side of his head – smell something else, musky, slightly skunky, which snagged in his throat, coating it with old, rancid fat. The bear peered into his face, nose to nose. Sniffed him.

  Death was smelling him to see if he was ripe; Death was looking him in the eyes to see how they would answer. When the grizzly caught you, you best play possum.

  Don’t you try to eat me, old bear. I ain’t big, but I’m more’n you can swallow. I might stick in your throat and choke you. I might slide down your gullet like a straight razor, slice you stem to stern.

  The bear was leaving him, swinging his head toward Grace. The two black eyes bored across the table to where the child clutched Grace’s shirt pocket, mouth hanging open with terror. The Englishman’s boy thought he could see a little picture of Grace holding that babe tight sitting in each eye of the bear. Slowly, the bear wrinkled his lips and bared his teeth. Slowly, he backed across the room to the door, his moccasins whispering in the dirt as he smiled his yellow, carnivorous grin for Grace and only Grace. Then he was gone.

  The Englishman’s boy glanced at the Eagle. He was staring at the yawning door, clasping the child even closer.

  “Eagle.”

  Grace didn’t answer.

  “Eagle.”

  He turned to the boy, kissed the child on the head, set her on the floor between his feet.

  “What the hell was that, Eagle?”

  Grace stood up. “Assiniboine Bear Cult man. One of the chosen few the bear visits in a dream to pass bear medicine to.”

  “So what the hell was he doing here?”

  Grace was watching the door, as if he expected the bear to shuffle back in any minute. “I don’t know. But it can’t be good. A bear man always means bad luck. They never prosper. Their wives die and their children go hungry. The spirit of the bear brings trouble and death. They have a reputation as touchy killers like the grizzly. Maybe these people know what it means, but I don’t.” The family sat solemn as owls, watching Grace as he spoke. He put money beside his plate, more money than he should have. “I’ve got a bad feeling. I think we better get on back to the post and warn the boys. Maybe it’s nothing but it stinks like something.” He turned to the old woman. “We’re obliged for the hospitality. I’m obliged to have sat in a house on a Sunday. When we’re gone, bar the door.”

  Leaving wasn’t so easy though; when she realized he intended to go, Rose Marie wrapped herself around his leg and hung on with all her might. The Eagle pried her off, screaming, and passed her to her granny.

  Stepping out the door the Eagle drew his pistol and signed for the Englishman’s boy to do the same. The door closed behind them and they heard the bar fall with a solid chunk behind them. It was hot and still. The sun glared on the surrounding cabins. There was no smoke rising from the chimneys. A great silence reigned. Grace cocked his head, listening. Nothing but insects playing jew’s-harps in the grass. Even the dogs were mute. Not a soul moved outside the cabins. He could feel eyes pressed to the chinks between the logs, watching him.

  He narrowed his eyes against the painful light, attentively swept the field from right to left. It was empty. No sign of the Bear Cult man. He had disappeared, maybe into the willows down by the creek. Maybe across the creek and up the bench rising to the north of Moses Solomon’s fort. He prayed God he wasn’t lying up there with a gun, sighting them now.

  “Let’s move,” he said.

  He broke into a trot and the Englishman’s boy fell in beside him. The gophers squeaked and dove for their holes at their approach. The Englishman’s boy didn’t know why they were running, but suddenly, like Farmer Hank, he had no intention of being left behind. The taut look on the Eagle’s face persuaded him that if the Eagle said move, they’d better move.

  The Eagle had bottom, he never let up until they reached Fort Farwell. The Métis were gone. Across the creek the Indian camp might have been a painting, except that now and then a dog or horse moved, spoiling the picture and the conceit. The only living thing outside the walls of the fort was Scotty hunched on a wooden bucket; Scotty smiling to himself, scribbling like mad with a stub of pencil in a cracked-spine journal.

  “Where’s Hardwick?” Grace asked him.

  Scotty didn’t look up.

  Grace took him by the shoulder and shook him. “Goddamn it, where’s Hardwick?”

  Scotty stared up with a dazed, angelic smile. He shaded his eyes with a hand. “Why, in Hades,” he said sweetly, then returned to writing.

  The Englishman’s boy tapped Grace on the shoulder. A rider was coming toward the post at a gallop. George Hammond in a lather of high excitement. “That thieving red son of a bitch stole my horse again!” he shouted. “Same son of a bitch I paid a bottle of whisky yesterday! Same horse! I’m riding over yonder to get him back!” He pointed wildly to the Assiniboine camp as his horse champed and spun. “I regret to say there ain’t no men at Moses Solomon’s post with the guts to support me, but I heard tell there’s a fellow here by the name of Tom Hardwick who has a reputation for being a man! I rode over to see if he’s as big as his brag! I rode over to see if he’ll back a fellow recovering his rightful property! I rode over to see -”

  “Goddamn right he will,” said Hardwick, steppin
g through the gate of the stockade. “Goddamn right he will.” He walked toward the mounted man with his arm outstretched. “And here’s his hand on it.”

  24

  Chance set an absolute deadline for delivery of a first draft of the photoplay. I’ve been working day and night for two weeks, surviving on sandwiches, coffee, cigarettes, and nerves. Fifteen years ago a scenario was a bare-bones sketch, often written in a day, a crutch which director and actors used as a guide to improvise a picture. Photoplays have become more detailed, but they’re still expected to be quickly written, rough-hewn scenes, a blueprint for a shoot. Maybe I’ve got too close to the material. It’s tough to convey the feeling of McAdoo’s story without dialogue, because I keep hearing his voice, the way he told it. I’m fighting to capture his emotions in images which will foreshadow the last scene, the awful conclusion to the picture. And while I’m doing this I have to keep in mind Will Hays, remember that what happens to the girl can’t actually be shown, has to be suggested in some way which won’t offend the proprieties of the censors but conveys to the audience the stark horror of her fate. Some scenes I’ve rewritten five or six times, trying to get a slow build to the fire, a suggestion of stealthily crackling flames which finally burst up in a raging conflagration. But instead, the writing feels like a forced march through a bog, every step forward sinking me deeper in a mire of confusion and uncertainty. Maybe Rachel is right. Maybe I am nothing but a blank-filler, a title-writer. After fourteen days of floundering I need help so badly I call her at home.

  “Rachel?”

  “My Little Truth Seeker! To what do I owe the honour of this call?”

  Her pronunciation is a little eroded around the edges, liquor having rubbed away enough clarity for me to know she’s been hitting the bottle heavily. And it’s only seven o’clock.

  “I need help.”

  “What kind of help?”