by kc dyer
In spite of the many “Elk crossing” signs we pass, the sheep prove to be the last of our wildlife close encounters for the day. At one point, Ernie swears he sees a bear in a dense section of forest, but by then it’s begun to grow dark, and I really think he’s trying to entertain Frankie, who has lost interest in her game and grown somewhat fractious.
Night falls quickly in the mountains, and it’s only from the noise of the truck engine that I can tell we’re no longer climbing through the Rockies. Bundling up my hoodie into a pillow, I jam it between my neck and the tattered padding on the inside of the truck door and close my eyes. There’s no way I’ll be able to sleep in this loosely sprung truck, but at least I can give my tired eyes a rest.
I wake up as the truck slows to a halt in a spray of gravel. My head is no longer jammed against the door, but curled into the crook of Dominic’s shoulder, and I lie there sleepily a moment, enjoying the peace. Instead of the chugging engine of the Ford F-150, I can hear, in my left ear, at least, the quiet thrum of Dominic’s heart.
Slowly, I pull my head away and sit up, determined not to wake him. But his eyes glitter in the dark, and I see the gleam of his smile.
“Good sleep?” he asks quietly. He holds his finger to his lips and points at the front seat, and I realize I must not have been the only one napping. I can hear Frankie’s deep breathing now, and I nod my understanding back at Dom. There’s no sign of either Ernie or Estelle. My eyes are adjusting to the dark, but I can see firelight reflected on the windshield. Dom reaches across me to quietly open the door, and I unlatch my seatbelt. The truck rocks as I step out, and again as Dominic follows me, but little Frankie stays dead to the world, cozied up in her car seat.
I stretch luxuriously, and then shiver. Beside me, Dom holds up the hoodie I’d been using as a pillow, and I jam my arms into the warmth of it gratefully.
“You were snoring,” he whispers.
“I was not,” I insist, but his grin only broadens.
“Where are we, anyway?” I whisper to change the subject, but a voice replies from behind me.
“Near Morley,” says Estelle, appearing out of the gloom. She’s holding a drinking box and possibly a blanket. It’s hard to see in the dark.
“This is part of the Stoney Nation, and we’re welcome here.” She gestures over at what I can now see is an enormous bonfire, surrounded by a milling group of figures, little more than silhouettes in the darkness. “We’ll rest here and drive into the city in the morning. It’s not much farther.”
She turns away from us to unbuckle her daughter, and wraps her, still sleeping, into the folds of the blanket.
Dominic has pulled on his own jacket, with the hood up, and together we leave Estelle to deal with Frankie, and walk toward the flames. Six or seven people, both men and women, pull out skin drums. I stand in the dancing firelight, mesmerized by the pulsing rhythm of the drums, the rising and falling of voices in a language older than any I’ve ever known.
Sure of nothing—not of making it back to New York in time, not of winning the job at ExLibris, not even of the slow, subtle changes in my feelings toward Dominic, I’m overwhelmed by a sudden wave of gratitude my life has brought me to this place. If I lose everything, I will have seen this.
I will have seen this.
I don’t know how long I stand rooted to the spot, but the smell of something delicious makes me turn my head. I look across to see a group of women, busily preparing and filling a long table with food. As the table—a sheet of plywood laid across a handful of sawhorses—is covered with steaming bowls and platters, Dom is busy in the middle of the group, sleeves rolled up, folding and punching dough. His hood is off again, and he’s tied his locs back.
He laughs at something one of the women says—they all seem to be laughing, in truth—and looks up at me, eyes dancing, and suddenly?
I’m gone.
Done.
I try to smile back, but instead, I burst into tears.
chapter sixty
IMAGE: Frankie’s Sheep
IG: Romy_K [Near Morley, Alberta, April 26]
#FirstNationsProtest #HardTruths
9807
It’s dark away from the fire and the makeshift kitchen, but that’s what I need at the moment. I step behind a teepee someone has erected from long poles and a fine, smoothly tanned skin, shivering in the sudden chill of being away from the fire.
I wipe my eyes hard on my cuff, and promise myself—promise—to keep my secret. Our lives are complicated enough already. His mother’s employer is my family’s sworn enemy.
No one can know that I have fallen in love with this man. It takes me a good ten minutes to get enough of a grip on myself to risk heading back to where people can see me.
Ernie pats a spot on a blanket beside where he and Estelle are seated. He’s holding the sleeping Frankie across his lap while Estelle eats from a paper plate. A full plate sits in front of him on the ground.
“Go get some food,” he says as I approach. “I’ll save the place for you.”
I fill my plate with brown beans and some kind of dried, chewy fish that tastes almost like cranberries.
“Try this,” says Dom, plopping down cross-legged beside me, with his own plate. “It’s called bannock. I just learned how to bake it.”
It is, of course, delicious—soft and chewy and buttery.
“Another recipe to add to your repertoire,” I say, and he reaches across to swipe his piece through the last of the sauce on my plate.
“Already taken a shot for my site,” he says, and then pops it into his mouth.
Later, when we sit around the fire, I mostly listen. My world lies on the other side of this continent, and it’s my job to try to help out the family that has cared for me all my life. But here, feeling the heat of the fire on my face, and the cold of the wind on my back in such contrast, I listen and learn. The men and women around me debate treaty rights in Canada, and what that means with regard to who owns—or acts as a steward for—the nation’s oil and gas.
Estelle tells me there are nearly two hundred First Nations in British Columbia alone, but now we are in Alberta, opinions on pipelines and mineral rights can vastly differ. It’s no real surprise how this collection of nations, like any group, holds differing opinions on many topics: mineral rights and global warming and the massive risks faced by First Nations women. The discussion rising and falling throughout the evening is sometimes loud, but is ultimately respectful.
Later, when I want more than anything to find Dominic, and kiss the spot on the inside of his elbow just above the tiny scar from where he burnt himself on the Wahash Mahat, I do no such thing. Instead, I take the blanket offered me by one of the three teenage girls, and curl up with them in the back of someone’s old GMC Jimmy.
The next morning, I wake early and extricate myself carefully from the group of girls who are curled up like puppies in the back of the truck. As I walk over to the wooden outhouse near the rodeo stand, I see a movement under the tailgate.
Rubbing sleep out of his eyes, Dominic rolls out of his spot on the ground and stretches. His jacket pulls high over his lean stomach, and the sensation that shoots through me is so intense, I have to look away.
“Did you sleep on the ground?” I ask, as he does a few neck circles and then jumps up and down on the spot.
“Yep. And quit grinning at me like I’m a fool. This is good for the circulation, y’know.”
The camp is waking up around us, and in no time small meals are eaten or packaged for later, and the convoy gets ready to move again. We’ve been joined in the night by some local members of one of the Stoney Nations, and they bring with them a small number of magnificent dappled horses.
To Dominic’s absolute delight, he is invited to ride with the group, and since the invitation mercifully does not include me, we agree to meet up at the protest
itself, at noon.
I end up in the back of a jeep, with two women introduced to me by Estelle. June and Alexis are mother and daughter, and to my delight, June even remembers reading Jules Verne when she was in school. I spend the rest of the morning learning about the horror of residential schools, and the slow and painful reconciliation process taking place in Canada.
The pipeline protest is set to begin on Calgary’s pedestrian-friendly Eighth Avenue mall, and following the drumbeat, the parade makes its way to city hall. There, near the end of the protest, a group of mounted riders joins us at last.
Dom winces at me, and it turns out he needs help dismounting, since his legs are so cramped up, he can’t actually bend his knees. As he hands the reins off to one of Ernie’s friends, the sound of chanting rises up behind us. I turn to see a group—a large group—of counter-protesters has gathered. Turns out, oil and gas production form a significant part of the local economy, and as for pipelines?
Pretty darned popular to many Calgarians.
Things get ugly very quickly.
When a scuffle breaks out nearby, I find myself being hauled out of the fray by one stiff-legged American man.
“We’ve got to find a train,” Dom hisses at me as we hustle away from the milling crowd. “The Greyhound no longer runs in this country.”
Above the rising voices, I hear hoofbeats, and suddenly a number of other mounted individuals arrive. This group, however, are all dressed in blue uniforms.
“I thought Mounties only wore red,” I mutter at Dom, but he’s getting directions to the station from Estelle. She’s carrying Frankie on one hip, and is keeping a judicious distance from the counter-protesters.
“It’s that way, under the tower,” she says. “You can’t miss it.”
Then, turning to me, she thrusts a book into my hand.
“In case you want to learn something about being an ally.”
I add the book, by a First Nations writer called Thomas King, to my growing suitcase library. Both she and Frankie give us big hugs before returning to the protest.
And less than an hour later, Dominic and I nab seats on a mostly freight-laden train heading to Toronto. When the engine pulls away from Calgary, it’s towing ninety cars filled with prairie wheat, a single car for passengers, and no actual sleeping berths.
chapter sixty-one
IMAGE: Canadian Prairie
IG: Rom_K [Alberta, April 26]
#EndlessSky #AVanishing
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The train picks up speed as it heads east, and outside the windows, it’s like the majestic peaks of the Rockies were part of some kind of a fever dream. Within a few minutes, the land rocketing past us moves from a gentle, rolling landscape to a dead flat, yellow-brown pancake, with lumps of dirty snow still occasionally visible.
I turn away from the window to find Dom staring at me. But instead of glancing away when he sees me notice, he holds my gaze. We are both sitting beside the window, facing each other, and he leans forward and puts a hand on my knee.
“First time we’ve been alone in a while,” he says. “You okay with that?”
I’m so okay with that.
But instead of saying so, I stand up, and switch across into the empty seat beside him. Outside, the sun is rapidly dropping toward the horizon of the biggest sky I have ever seen. I want to imprint this moment on my memory, but I need to say what’s on my mind before I chicken out. I pull my tattered bullet journal out of my daypack, and flip it open to the most recent page.
“You gonna read me something?” he says, with an amused smile.
“No. It’s just—my brain dries up when I’m nervous, okay? I have some things to say.” I gaze down at the list on the page, not sure where to start.
I take a deep breath. “Okay, number one . . .”
But before I can finish, he pushes the book aside and kisses me.
Things I need to tell Dominic:
1. Without a doubt, the best parts of this trip for me have been the ones with you and Sumaya. The only reason I took on this journey was to help my Uncle Merv, which feels like a pretty good cause, you know? But helping Sumaya get to her only family? That was important. And I wouldn’t have been a part of that without you.
2. When you walked me along that Alaskan beach, you gave me my happy memories of my parents back. I will never forget this.
3. I know you need to help your mom. But you are smart and strong and so good at everything you do. I have to hope things will be all right for you both, in the end. But I’m the bookshop’s only hope. Without me, Two Old Queens will fail.
4. I need to win this contest. If you hate me for it, it is a price I have to pay.
* * *
—
I never do get around to reading him the list. Which is probably a good thing.
Because instead, as darkness falls and the sky above us fills with a thousand, thousand stars, we talk about who we were before. And who we might be after.
We make a decision to return to ExLibris together. We can’t both have the job, but splitting the bonus money can help both our families a little.
At some point, the conductor passes through the cabin, handing out Hudson’s Bay blankets to those who want one.
“I could get used to this,” Dom says. He’s got his seat tilted back, and his half of the blanket pulled up to his chin.
“This, as in . . . ?”
“As in seeing the world out the window of a train. I mean, my heart has always been in the kitchen. But there’s something about baking currant scones in the galley of a submarine that adds a little spice to the proceedings.”
I sit up and stare at him. “A—submarine?”
He grins sheepishly. “I don’t want to oversell it. It was only for three days. But it’s how I beat you to the UK—or would have, if that damn storm hadn’t blown you forward.”
“Wait a minute—where the hell did you manage to hitch a ride on a submarine?”
“Out of Rhode Island, actually. She was a retired Virginia-class vessel, and these days they use her in the film industry. Some director with more money than sense had been shooting a movie off the East Coast, and they needed to move across to get some footage off the Channel Islands. A guy I used to work with does film catering now, and he talked them into taking me.”
I flop back into my seat. “You wouldn’t catch me . . .” I begin, but my words die in my throat.
“Wouldn’t catch you?” he prompts.
I can’t help laughing. “I was going to say you wouldn’t catch me on a submarine if my life depended on it. But that’s Old Romy talking. New Romy squeezed backwards through a hole in the ground to run through an ancient tunnel under Paris. I’ve ridden a gondola above the Alps. I managed to find my own way through the streets of Mumbai. So much I used to be scared of doesn’t frighten me anymore.”
He reaches for my hand under the covers. “I’ve always wanted to travel the world,” he says. “I’m glad I got to do it with you.”
“Yeah, I bet the part where you had to hold my hair while I vomited up Egyptian street meat was a highlight.”
He laughs. “The highlight was kissing you in Singapore,” he says. “Know why?”
“Oh, I know why. You didn’t think we were going to live through that flight.”
He shakes his head. “Nope. It was because it reminded me of this movie I saw a long time ago. It was about this woman, really tall, gorgeous, who travels around the world. And when she gets to Singapore, she falls for . . .”
I sit up so suddenly, the blanket drops to the floor. “Not Eat Pray Love . . .” I groan.
“That’s it!” he says delightedly. “It was so romantic . . .”
“That wasn’t even Singapore,” I yell, and then feeling the eyes of the other passengers, I drop back into my seat. “It was Bali,” I
hiss. “Not Singapore.”
He shrugs, and pulls the blanket up over both of us. “I don’t care,” he says. “It was worth it.”
* * *
—
The next day, while hunting for Estelle’s book in my suitcase on the luggage rack near the rear of the car, I notice a connecting door is ajar. When I stick my head inside, I find a railcar, stacked with bales of hay. To one side, there’s a narrow space, open and private, tucked behind a section of tightly wedged boxes. When I disappear a second time, taking Dominic’s precious Hudson’s Bay blanket, he follows me.
“There you are,” he says. “I thought you must be looking at the scenery. It is still entirely flat out there.”
I step aside so he can see the cozy hideaway I have constructed.
“Nope,” I say. “I’ve been busy in here. Amazing what you can do with a borrowed blanket or two, isn’t it?”
He doesn’t answer, instead holding out his arms to me. I step into them, and find the fit to be nothing less than perfect. The sunlight streaming through the door is dappled, the yellow-gold of hayfields outside lighting up the green flecks in his eyes. Suddenly, his eyes darken as he drops his head to kiss me. This close, his usual scents of cinnamon and vanilla shatter into components too complex to parse—cloves and maybe sandalwood and who knows what else. It is entirely intoxicating, and I find I’ve lost the ability to think coherently—or at all.
After what seems like forever, we break apart. His smile broadens as he points at the door. “Does that thing lock?”
It does.
And that’s the last either one of us sees of the Canadian prairies.
* * *
—
Right around dawn on April 30th, something wakes me. I’m alone, cozy under the blanket in our own little corner of the grain car. The fact we’ve managed to find such a private spot feels like a small miracle, but it’s possible all the Canadians on board are just too polite to say anything. No one is awake as I sneak back into the passenger car, feeling weak-kneed, and with straw in places I’d rather not think about too closely.