by Rudy Wiebe
Wednesday September 11
Drove to crematorium with Herbert: “you’re not going there alone” 9 a.m. Same closed coffin on dolly / last frozen look, then screwed tight. Older man explained calcination—6 hrs. at 1800 degrees, flames in oven like Dachau we saw ‘76 / he shoved it in on rollers, clamped door, pulled switch, roar / in parking lot we watched black smoke from chimney boil into blue sky / does hell smoke / all relatives except Yo’s mom left: really tough for them too how to behave, how (not) to think where (they think) he certainly is now. After funeral last night one explosion, me at bro David’s old preacher-death platitudes, “Shut up, you understand nothing, not one goddamn thing!” Walked ravine with Yo / worried when Miriam didn’t come back for hours / Whitemud Ravine alone. Drove Denn to HSch today noon, got him p.m.
Thursday, September 12
Yo took her mom with car to airport, me Denn in pickup to HSch, then to U—tried to work for 2 hrs but couldn’t, had to walk home 1 1/2 hrs. Talked with Yo got pickup from U she drove it 3:30 to downtown chapel, small container of “remains” + to fun. home for clothes G wore in pickup. Drove car to Aspen cabin / walked where he parked snow gone, began to rain, small birch all around, close, mud tracks where Dave plowed out. Made a circle in cabin Yo, Dennis, Ailsa, Colin, Grant, Miriam, Leo, Rick and Lorrine, Holda and Dave, Big Ed, Joan, me / little Rick crying, grdma. Holda carried him / couldn’t sing but some talk of happy Gabe, how he worked, built so much of cabin, read “Einsamkeit” and “Beatitudes” Dave and Yo prayed all walked down path into valley. Cold rain, Yo holding jar, I holding onto her. Chunky ash calcified: all took turns, poured them in rapids below beaver dam / some sank grey as gravel, some drifted away toward N Sask River, ocean. Back to Edm. / at Grant and Joan’s / listened to Bach / what? Wake up soon, horrible dream who said that
Friday September 13
Drove Denn to HSch, then univ, tried to work on lectures, George came, then Shirley, always with her own long depression such good colleagues, only a few dare come and talk, most avoid you in the hall. BK phoned from Calgary, he’s so caring, understands so well tho nothing actually helps in class mostly useless wrote snatches of things about G’s death try to think clear and logical, why there is far too much too far beyond thinking / immoveable
Saturday September 14
Apparently Dave went to Aspen Creek, all day alone / we have to get rid of pickup, can’t stand being in it, seeing that canopy parked by our house. To G’s neat apt. all his familiar stuff, lifetime of gifts On neat bed, quilt-blanket Grandma sewed him cutlery so careful in drawers, kitchen—o—Fred helps carry furniture out to pickup, tells Yo it’s okay, he’ll clean up, he’s already moved out, not staying there / cried / hauled away / reading more G papers—too many Evening with Yo/Denn to Jubilee Aud. Tickets to Mendelsohn’s Elijah / intermission and there’s John in lobby crowd, his young wife brutal cancer, curled tight in stomach “like a baby” he says making a fist, maybe one more week beauty of music rips you apart, especially Widow’s dead son / If with all your heart ye truly seek / Then, then shall the righteous shine as the sun
Sunday September 15
To church, no talk, away quick. p.m. walk river valley woods along NSask. with Joan and Grant and kids beautiful fall colours, turning cold in sunlight Dennis and Colin clowning, yelling a bit on the river path, Ailsa too. Yo nor I can look at her never she at us what does she think can she ever have a clue please God never
Monday September 16
Worked, managed one lit class, students silent. TC came to office, PhD student, talked about death of her baby—she’s all alone. p.m. went with Yo looked at a silver caravan, almost made a deal. Dave left work, came to U, we walked bush trail down, sat on edge of NSask, watched water. Dave said: About time for the ashes. We’re all exhausted. Three areas of G’s life: images/music/words. And all the love he gave and got—nothing enough to hold him kept him less than empty
Tuesday September 17
Boxes of letters, cards, more letters in mail, at home and U. So easy to open, such good people, good Got pickup regist. from RCMP and traded it + loan from bank for caravan Evening with Miriam and Leo wedding impossible this weekend but nothing will ever change, why wait? So next week Sat. 28. Mir looks pale as a spirit / talked into morning told/retold all we all saw but didn’t see, why couldn’t—had we?
(3 days blank)
Saturday September 21
Wedding/Mir & Leo NO
To Aspen Creek new caravan drives silent as a ghost yellow fall leaves falling in small rain walked woods, dug up potatoes, carrots by myself. The everlasting life of relentless earth forever there. Got pickup bedding from town RCMP—very bad (both) that evening / all boxes, furniture stacked in home garage now, all his “stuff” he collected, made, loved
Sunday September 22
(blank)
Monday September 23
Dreadful day a bit of work routine
(4 days blank)
Saturday September 28 across Sunday September 29
A.m. arrivals, p.m. Wedding at Aspen Creek lovely, in semi-circles of (funeral) friends, lovely music, loving words. All poplars golden now in brilliant sunlight. Miriam’s ethereal beauty Leo’s Latino band music so lifting heartbeat ceremony (Herbert has to do it all, life, death) and pictures and eating. Gabe could have enjoyed some of it. Bits of laughter sudden hidden weeping
Words crammed together, or blank gaps. 1985 endured. But photocopies do end.
Abruptly Hal’s overwhelming basement concentration split, exhaustion slugged him. He sagged among the boxes, the pages fell, but he found himself still clutching Gabriel’s black-taped blue Bible and his hands opened it instinctively, his mother said the Bible always has a verse gift from God—and in the middle you’re sure to hit either Isaiah or Jeremiah—there it was, Lamentations 3—with two verses on facing pages underlined so heavily not even his burning eyes could miss them:
The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul that seeks him.
O yeah.
And again:
Thou hast seen the wrong done to me, O God;
judge thou my cause.
Judge, O judge … always the God Almighty judge.
And then, in mercy, the indelible prayer of his childhood came to him, singing on the memory of sweet Yo’s midnight piano:
Muede bin ich, geh zu Ruh,
Tired am I, go to rest,
Schliesse meine Aueglein zu;
Close my little eyes;
Vater, moeg das Auge dein
Father, may your eye
Ueber meinem Bette sein.
Watch over my bed.
FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2010
Sunrise burned in the slats of his living room windows. Staggering a little Hal reached his front door, twisted the bolt lock and pulled the door open: the Edmonton Journal lay as usual on the doormat and, holding onto the door grip, he stooped carefully—a khaki parka hood beside the newspaper. And a human body. Stretched out the length of the porch to the edge of the steps; on its left side, knees slightly bent and booted feet—a hole worn open in one toe—boots stacked neatly right on left. No head visible, hood pulled over tight, fur edge worn to fruzz and khaki gleaming with grime, sleeves crumpled empty—no arms?—they bulged the parka at the stomach. Was he breathing?
Never before. Not in twenty-three years.
The body moved. Twisted over onto its back and the jean legs kicked out, the hood opened to half a bristly face: coarse hair, black but trimmed, and tan skin, a thin bent nose with its tip still hidden in stubby fur. The eye was shut. A car swished by on the street; the sunlight was bright as ice on the strip of skin between parka and jeans, the narrow track of hair above the navel.
Hal lifted the newspaper and closed the door softly; turned the bolt. The house hummed with freshness, warmth. Never before.
His night on the basement floor dazed him, his body as saturated as aching stone. What is to be done?
He dropped the pap
er on the couch and swayed across the room between furniture, grabbed for the railing to hoist himself up the stairs, steady, swing the right arm in rhythm. Inside the second floor closet, below the bedding shelves he found the box, and inside it the Hudson’s Bay point blanket Gabriel had bought the first winter he worked and often slept alone in the Aspen Creek cabin. Canadian boreal forest, he said, you sleep under HBC wool. Later, Yo could not let it go. Finally she and Hal slept together under it every winter, until her heels grew too tender for its weight: the full four-point blanket, white with four broad stripes of indigo, yellow, red, green, queen size thick and heavy. Brought from England to trade for fur since 1799. He felt the wool against his bristly face as he walked step by careful step back down into the living room; for a moment he could hug this comfort tight.
The weight Plains Cree Chief Big Bear felt hanging over his body when they forced him to sit on a stool with his ankles chained, surrounded him with four policemen and took his picture. Prince Albert, North-West Territories: 491 river miles down the North Saskatchewan from Edmonton. July 4, 1885.
He unlocked the front door again and pulled it open.
The man lay breathing in the crisp, ironic sunlight. His midriff still bare. Hal spread the heavy blanket gently over him, carefully covered his boots. The point blanket draping Big Bear had only one stripe. What colour had it been? The man’s legs twitched, but his eye did not open.
Here’s the archives’ photo, Gabe said. Red for sure.
That afternoon Hal and Owl hunted the Strathcona, Mill Creek and Cloverdale banks of the North Saskatchewan River valley. All the places Owl knew, and some they were told about by people they met, and some they discovered together. They began with the high arch of stones layered on the ground beneath the concrete Saskatchewan Drive bridge across 106A Street ravine. The stones were too massive to move by hand, but they found shapes among them where people had nested high up beneath the roadbed, behind the concrete arches, crumpled cardboard in cradles of rocks as it seemed levered into hollows for human shapes to curl or stretch out. Also discarded grocery carts, knapsacks and torn garbage bags and bright ripped polyester jackets, gnawed rib and chicken bones. It was possible a couple, or a tiny colony, of people had lived there dry and close under the ceaseless traffic before winter, though not yet after.
Hal was breathing hard, all this walking, climbing, scrambling through snow patches with the air snipping cold in his nostrils. Such a beautiful spring day; so empty. A winding strip of boreal forest through the centre of his city; naked of any leaf. He had walked the manicured park paths so often, but this wildness, he realized, he had never truly seen; living high on the riverbanks, he had always, simply, looked over it.
A long valley ridge of snowy spruce and wind-shattered brush; farther below them they could see the disintegrating gape of Queen Elizabeth Pool through masses of bare trees standing, trees leaning and smashed against each other. And suddenly, on the ridge, they came upon a grey plastic mound. A valley resident lay inside between layers of canvas and sleeping bags and blankets, grizzlied and alert, a pot steamed on the three-stone firepit just inside his shelter. He never lived under bridges, he said, snow’s nothing you gotta stay clear of that, too much noise under streets, bridges shiver in traffic you can’t sleep, sleep is the last thing and the best thing and only thing you got, you feel them bridges sing at night from cars running them all day long, stay away from bridges. Okay, orange. Why should he tell them anything anyway?
Owl said mildly, “Because we’re looking.”
“So look. It’s no shit to me.”
“Hiy hiy, keyam.”
Walking the narrow track of melting snow in the draw below the ridge, Hal had not recognized a possible human shelter among the grey brush. Only if you knew what you were looking at, like Owl.
They climbed up stairs to 99th Street and ordered coffee in a shop they had never entered together. They rested at a table along the front window. On the sidewalk outside was the usual city garbage can, and a broad-shouldered man in a thin blue jacket bent there, looking into it. He reached far down, his left hand came up with a paper cup, his body straightened, he tilted his head back and poured the contents into his mouth. Hal could see his bristly Adam’s apple move. The man dropped the cup back into the can, but in the same motion bent down even farther, and after a moment his hand came up holding a half-eaten apple. No, Hal thought, not—the gnawed edges of the apple were rank brown. The man’s right hand took the apple between its thumb and forefinger, in his left hand a knife appeared, a long blade flicked and he began to chip away brown bits, they fell into the gaping can, the man turning the apple and paying no attention to the pedestrians staring at his quick skill. When the apple was trimmed to white, he lifted it to his mouth and began to eat, bite by thoughtful bite. He ate it down to the thinnest core.
Through the window Hal and Owl watched him together, drinking their coffee.
The point blanket, carefully folded to reveal its stripes, lay beside the doormat on the front porch. Hal shoved his arms under and lifted it to his face. He thought he smelled wood smoke. He raised his head, sniffed—cars swishing past all day on 104th Street—he bent to the blanket again. Perhaps.
No Miriam or Dennis numbers on the phone; but other messages:
“Hey Hal, it’s John, missed you at Coffee and Conversation yesterday. Hope the Papaschase land-steal talk last week—or the full moon, ha!—wasn’t too much for you! Call when you can or—”
Work on your Sunday sermon, John.
Ben’s voice: “I got a genealogy for that Isaak Wiens, third cousin twice removed but there’s a Rundschau entry I can’t read, of course, when will you—”
Maybe never—bumble it out with your computer translator.
“Hal … Al at Double Cup, you’re where? Becca says she hasn’t seen you in four—”
Becca we agreed, don’t lie.
Nothing police yet, good! so forget it, leave it all, especially phone, computer, e-mail—in what was life now there was always maybe later, sometime—he poked the speaker off. Tired. Exhausted actually. But good exhausted, the sharp air of valley walking, the good body ache and right hip no worse than usual and he felt no need for food, already eating forever for seventy-five years, who needs it? He poured a glass of cherry juice, drank it slowly and beneath his feet he felt the basement, waiting. All day it had sifted through his mind, always there, even when he was concentrating on some rotten log not to stumble over the basement like an irrepressible song reeled through his head, he had not been able to shake it, tramp it into the snow-spongy mud, discard it in any of the numberless city garbage cans. So … okay … only skim, touch here, there, just enough to sleep deep tonight, all that back and leg work, arms swinging, just skim …
GABE’S SPIRAL NOTEBOOK (1), the first page
Oct/81 Great Expectations “Mrs. Joe is a very clean house …
Skip.
June/82 W. L. Morton cliché “The American Fathers …”
No.
Nov 11/82 Went to see Mephisto, all sound seems dubbed …
No.
“Tess Feb 15/83 - moving and complex tragedy of one of the most delightful and loveable heroines in all literature …
Powerful music: Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere …”
That’s where that soul-wrenching requiem began? And suddenly there folded in the notebook, between 1983 pages, a single sheet written in Yo’s distinctive angles:
Jan 1, 1977
Dear Mom + Dad,
If you ever read this its because
I never woke up this morning and because
I never wanted to. It’s not your fault, you
guys were great giving me all that stuff,
“material goods.” But in my case, I’m in
love with a girl I’ll never get too meet, just
read about. She means everything to me
but I’ll never get to touch her, kiss her,
talk to her. And also because my life
is a
total waste, you guys have a right
to get mad at me like you do so this way I’ll end
all my problems, my very large problems.
Don’t let Dennis turn out like me, he’s
really a great kid, and Miriam’s wonderful too.
She goes good with life, I don’t.
So good by, hopefully … maybe some
day we’ll meet in heaven … some of us.
Love, Gabriel Wiens
New Year’s Day 1977. Hal scrabbled to remember: “total waste” on the verge of sixteen years of—that Romanian gymnast Comaneci … Nadia, the Montreal ’76 Summer Olympics. Born the same year as Gabriel: on the TV screen her perfect child figure dancing light as fire on the high beam and the gym floor; perfect 10s no one had ever scored before, and Gabriel’s staring fascination that neither Yo nor he grasped—not even after the letter. Yo found it, and together, as always with each of the kids, they asked Gabe about it—the kitchen in Riverbend, the three of them around the table where they all ate, every day, and Gabriel yelled at them for snooping—but it was addressed to them!—and stamped upstairs to his room and tore it up and flushed the shreds down the toilet. But Yo had already copied it just in case—and on the other side too:
Jan 3, 1977
Dear Mom + Dad,
You guys call me a brat and