Children of the Day

by Sandra Birdsell

  The car disembarked and soon it was gone from view in a billow of dust, and Oliver and Romeo struck out across open country, walking without speaking. No doubt they were thinking of the fresh mound of earth in the cemetery in Aubigny, thinking that their time as a family had been too short a season. After a while, Romeo stopped and took off his jacket and spread it across the ground, Oliver following suit, the two of them disappearing into the tall grass, feeling the warmth of the earth against their bodies.

  You can’t come with me, Romeo said. Even if Oliver lied about his age, he wasn’t sure he could get him on at the meat plant in St. Boniface, where he’d worked for a year now on the killing-room floor.

  Oliver felt a pressure in his ribs. I don’t want to, he replied. Henri Villebrun had offered him work at the hotel, in exchange for a small weekly income and room and board.

  I’ve got a girl, Romeo said.

  So do I, Oliver thought.

  The sun pressed down on them and they drifted into sleep.

  They awakened as the day began to end, the wind quiet now, a breeze that held the scent of a field of freshly mowed hay, the sky turned royal blue. Oliver thought they would return the way they’d come, and was surprised when Romeo headed away across the land. He followed without speaking. Soon they began to hear cows calling, the echo hailing them from the opposite direction. And then another sound rose beneath it, thin and wavering.

  When a grove of saskatoon bushes grew large on the horizon, Oliver realized that Romeo’s intention was to visit their grandparents’ old farm site. A kind of farewell, likely, before he set off to live his life in St. Boniface. The log house began to take shape beyond the bushes, the place that had been their father’s boyhood home and now was home to pigs rooting about. The first time Romeo had taken Oliver here, he’d boosted him up to a window to have a look, but there was nothing more than a room lit by the daylight passing through the chinks, and a floor covered in soiled straw.

  Today they carried on towards the two-storey wood house built by the Mennonite settlers, and came upon the jalopy they’d seen on the ferry, nudged into a row of hollyhocks growing alongside a plank walk leading to the house. The sound they’d heard proved to be singing that would suddenly fall silent and then rise again. They followed the sound, skirted several small outbuildings, made their way towards a barnyard, which cows were crossing single file. Romeo feared a dog. Once when he’d come here, he’d been chased by a collie and forced to climb onto a shed roof until the animal lost interest. The blades of a windmill above the barn clattered and seemed to throw off sparks.

  The people they’d seen on the ferry had been joined by others, a crowd sitting on benches and chairs arranged in a semicircle. A table set before them was covered with a white cloth, and on it the remnants of a meal. Their joyless song began again, and continued for a few moments before breaking off. A man standing in front of the singers began speaking quietly. When he’d finished talking the people took up the song, and Oliver realized that he’d given them the next words to sing.

  Banshees, Romeo said darkly. That was what the stop-and-go singers brought to his mind: crows, or a large grey owl, keeping watch in a tree just beyond the house all of one night, soothsaying the death of Romeo and Oliver’s family. They went round the barn and emerged onto a field where children played at making a human tower. Several of the older boys had become the base of the tower, and were hauling the younger ones up onto their shoulders. A sudden teetering brought about screams of laughter.

  Romeo stopped to watch, a wistful smile pulling at a corner of his mouth. Sunlight glanced off a dugout pond, and there was a tree beside it where another group of younger children played; the girl Oliver had noticed on the ferry was climbing high up into its branches. A seed broadcast by the wind years ago had grown to this mature elm, whose wide crown had likely provided shade for their father. Perhaps he too had climbed it. Oliver was impressed by the young girl’s agility and courage.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the barking of a dog. Romeo swore as they turned to see a black-and-white animal bounding through the grass towards them. They broke into a run at the same time, Oliver slower, anticipating the nip of teeth at his calf. Someone whistled, calling the dog away.

  Holy mother of Christ, chased off of our own bloody land, Romeo said, when they’d stopped to catch their breath. By these Germans, and another of their kind before them. By the Bouchard family, whose dealing in real estate had caused their grandparents and others to lose their land. It hadn’t been automobiles that had made the Bouchards rich. Their money had been made in dirty land dealing, Romeo said, in what had been denied their father, and now them. In the coming years Romeo would fan the embers of his anger over the injustice meted out to his grandparents, so as not to dwell on the injustice that had been done to him by a priest.

  Their father had always said that their grandmother was unable to manage the farm without a man, and so she’d let it go. When Oliver came into possession of the tobacco can and her remembrances, he discovered that Romeo was the one who possessed the truth.

  After the battle at Batoche was over, we had very little to eat and our clothes were badly torn. No blankets or bedclothes. While we were there beside the creek, Louis Riel came to us. All his moccasins were torn and my sister gave him a pair. He wrote out his surrenderance papers and then the three went to meet the soldiers and give themselves up. Riel said that he took these two with him to witness that he was surrendering, and so that no one could claim the reward for his capture. He said he had left Montreal in 1870 at the age of twenty-three years to defend his country and religion and in 1885, he said, he was obliged to close his eyes for the North West Territory.

  The next day the captain arrived with two soldiers and an express wagon and took us to Clark Crossing, where all the army camps were. I became their cook. They then gave me supplies and clothing for a year and we went back home to Manitoba. With my five children, my sick husband and myself, I started out in my express, driving the team. I camped by the side of the road, and while my husband and children went to bed I tied my ponies and kept watch all night as there was lots of horse thieves at that time.

  I travelled for seven days, not seeing nobody and no houses. The eighth day I arrived at Qu’Appelle valley. We met two friends of my husband. They reported to the Catholic mission that a family from Batoche had arrived. Curiosity brought them all to see who it was. They thought my husband was wounded in the rebellion. A man bought my ponies and rig for sixty dollars so I could take my sick husband on the train to St. Boniface. Then I went back to the farm with my children to take up the work. The first thing I seen was a house that hadn’t been there when I left, and someone’s wash hanging on a line.

  I went to see the Father at St. Norbert, and he told me that we had been away too long a time. There was nothing to be done.

  Oliver sat on his haunches beside the river, waiting for Ulysse to bring the ferry across, thinking that he’d first met Sara on the ferry with her people, and not in Winnipeg, as she believed. He had never mentioned that meeting because the day itself was too painful a memory. He wouldn’t say that the scrip documents he kept in the pocket of his army jacket proved that the land Kornelius and Katy farmed rightfully belonged to his grandparents. Their farm had been stolen out from under them when they’d gone up to the North Saskatchewan.

  The ferry engine roared to life, and moments later Ulysse emerged from the motor house through a billow of blue exhaust, a gnarled-oak man, sinewy and impervious to the elements as he had been when, years earlier, he appeared at the hotel to voice his opinion about Sara. Sent, no doubt by Romeo, Oliver had since concluded. Coming upon Oliver lost in the familiar rhythm of mopping up the previous night’s stickiness from the parlour floor, and not hearing the opening and closing of the back door.

  Oliver knew that the ordinances governing drinking establishments made it against the law for anyone going past the parlour to be able to look inside. Nevertheless he’d knotte
d the curtains and let in the pale winter light that illuminated the wet trail of the floor mop, the tabletops shining with ring marks, and deeply scarred, as you’d expect them to be after so many years of service. He sensed a presence, glanced up and was surprised to be confronted by Ulysse. His hands and face were windburned, a plum blush underlying a complexion turned smoky-looking from campfires, from road dust.

  You leave them people alone, Ulysse said. He’d carried the words on such a long journey, and wanted immediately to set them down. His mukluks looked the worse for wear, wrapped in strips of a wool blanket and bound with babiche.

  I always told your brother, don’t bother going over there. The past is gone. Now he tells me that you’re tangled up with one of those, there. You’re running around loose with a Deetch woman, Ulysse said.

  Beyond the window, Oliver saw Sara coming yet again, plunging knee-deep through snowdrifts in the vacant lot, her coat unbuttoned and flapping, a plaid headscarf framing the pinch of worry in her features. Surely she hadn’t come on foot, not in this cold. He stepped sideways, as though to remove himself from an invisible circle on the floor. He wished that he hadn’t knotted the curtains.

  She’s not Canadian, she’s not even Catholic, Ulysse said. Their society isn’t acquainted. They’ve got their ways, that don’t mix. His voice trailed off as he sensed Oliver’s distraction.

  Oliver spotted Kornelius’s car parked one street over, in front of the creamery, its exhaust white and roiling. Her brother-in-law was behind the wheel, waiting, as Sara hurried towards the hotel, hugging herself against the wind. She cupped her eyes and pressed her forehead into the window, straining to see into the dimness at the back of the parlour, where he stood; then crooked her head, craning to catch a glimpse of the poolroom.

  Oliver willed Ulysse to remain silent as Sara’s silhouette dropped away from the window. Moments later, there was a noise as she tugged at the latch of the lobby door. He breathed a silent plea that she would not go round to the back.

  She’s in the family way, he heard himself say. He was relieved when he saw Sara go back across the street, kicking through the snow in the vacant lot.

  I’ll take care of things in my own time, Oliver thought, as he’d been telling himself for weeks, the promise not holding any more weight now than before.

  Her? Ulysse said. They watched as Sara got into the car and was driven away.

  A bibi? Ulysse asked. Oliver nodded, and Ulysse turned away in disgust. By golly, I thought you were the one with brains. Don’t you know that when a man puts more than his hands under a woman’s skirt, that’s usually what comes out? His voice went thin and crafty as he asked, What kind of woman is she, anyway? You sure it’s your family?

  It’s mine. Oliver spoke emphatically, the words slamming into his own chest.

  Holy mother. She’s not even English. Me, I’d sooner bunk down with a squaw. She knows how to take care of herself. And if she doesn’t, she isn’t likely to come tracking you down.

  Soon after, Ulysse left. Talking had worn him through, he said. And he did look suddenly fatigued and deflated, gaunt in the face. He wanted to go sit beside a fire and be quiet. For some time now, he’d been seeing a white bird near a thicket at Cranberry Portage. Wasn’t like any bird he’d ever seen, the way it acted—strange, circling low over the treetops; its wingspan was as large as that of a hawk. The bird always appeared near sunset, he said, and he believed it might be Martel, a man who’d disappeared while hunting during winter in that same area, near to ten years ago.

  In the early hours of the following morning, Oliver dressed and left the hotel, going down to the riverbank, where he strapped his skate blades onto his boots. Ice crystals streamed from his nostrils and mouth and the light of a headlamp illuminated his hands and the snow. While there were government ordinances that dictated how he conducted hotel business, laws could be made to take the shape of necessity. When it came to female matters, there was no bending.

  Oliver was obliged to do what a man of conscience should do. For him not to be able to look at his reflection without shame was worse than seeing his shame in another person’s eyes. As he buckled the straps he recalled the strength of his father’s fingers tightening the leather, and it finally became real to him that he was about to become a father.

  He followed footprints leading down to the middle of the river, where the impressions in the crusted snow held blue shadows. The ice cracked, the sound travelling away from him, but he knew he was safe. Safer than he’d been as a boy when he had gone tramping cross-country over snow ridges that could suddenly give way. He might have crashed through to his shoulders, with no chance to throw himself onto his back and swim out of it. As a boy he had feared a white smothering, and from time to time had dreamt about it. Dreamt that he was sinking and being held by the weight of the snow, unable to move as it closed in over his face.

  Tonight he skated towards the lights of Aubigny with his hands clasped at the small of his back, leaning into the long push and glide of his strokes. His trouser legs began flapping as he gained speed. The light of the headlamp swayed across his path, and it seemed that the winter world glided by while he remained fixed, even though his thigh and calf muscles were cramping with the effort and the cold. Across the highway stood the hotel, its windows darkened and all the houses of Union Plains laid out beyond it, also in darkness.

  He was coming near to the backside of Main Street, the houses strung out along the shoreline, woodsmoke streaming from the chimneys along with a yellowish smear of coal smoke, the odours both pleasant and harsh. Moments later the headlamp illuminated a red danger sign, and Oliver knew that a ramp where ice blocks were loaded onto wagons or truck beds loomed in the distance. Open water lay beyond that ramp.

  When the ice harvesters had finished cutting for the day, he and Romeo used to join other boys in a game of daring, venturing out amid the litter of ice spears crunching underfoot like glass. They dared one another to take a running slide, arms extended for balance, knife in hand, to see who could come nearest to the edge of open water. The others carried their knives for show; Romeo was the only one ever to use his. He sometimes purposefully misjudged the slipperiness of the ice, his momentum, and at the last moment twisted his body and fell onto his stomach, digging the knife into the ice to stop his backwards slide. Once he had slipped over the edge, waist-deep in the black icy water, the knife blade holding him in place until he could scramble back out, while Oliver looked on in admiration and fear.

  Oliver thought of the open water beyond the ramp, his legs scissoring round a gentle curve and the skate blades biting into the surface as he picked up speed, the wind a sheet of cold pressed against his face and body. He expected a shock of wet cold, so sudden and profound it would, in a moment, knock him unconscious. That is not the way, an inner voice told him. He let himself fall to the ice in a slide, rolling onto his back, his knees drawn to his chest. He felt the ripple of an ice fissure through his jacket, saw the lamp’s weak shaft of light dissolve into the dark and brilliant starred sky.

  He flailed his arms to slow himself down, then clutched at the ice in a futile attempt to stop, his fingertips raw and pulsing. In desperation he lifted his legs and slammed his skates onto the surface, their tips gouging a gutter of white; then rolled onto his stomach so that he might raise his head towards the downwards plunge in the water. Then a skate blade caught on the edge of a crack. In a sudden jerk he was swung sideways, sent spinning off the clear ice and rolling across the packed snow.

  He lay for a moment, panting with relief, realizing that he was feet away, not inches, not anywhere near to the brink. Unlike his brother, he lacked the courage to truly court danger.

  He took off the blades and left them on the ice, his legs trembling now as he plunged through snowdrifts wind-banked and hard along the river’s edge; half-running, stumbling, the air burning like fire in his chest. He struggled up an incline at the back of the Bouchard house, clutching at tufts of weeds to pull himself a
long; pushed through a cross-hatching of bushes that bit at his hands and face. The kitchen window was lit and illuminated a path of trodden snow between a garden shed and the clothesline stoop. The remainder of the windows along the back of the broad house were in darkness.

  The winter world pressed through his panic, the rasp and thud of his breath and heart. Snow squeaked loudly underfoot as he went up the stairs to the back door. Three light raps were always enough to bring her.

  A dog barked across town, likely announcing the presence of its own shadow, but just the same raising the hair on the nape of his neck. A reaction gained as a child from the tales he’d been told about dogs knowing when a soul was about to depart a body. Superstitions that had nothing to do with who he was now. He believed that neither animal nor so-called holy man could call down the unseen world, but nevertheless here he was, reacting like a child to the hubbub of a lonely dog—a grown man who was often tongue-tied in the presence of a priest.

  He breathed into his cupped hands, holding the white fog and heat against his face. Moonlight glistened in a cape of snow thrown over the roof of the garden shed, and in hoarfrost coating the clotheslines strung from the stoop. Footsteps approached behind the closed door, and Oliver’s uneasiness at the sound of the dog’s barking was replaced by an uneasiness over what he’d come to say.

  He sat across from Alice at the kitchen table, a dim light shining in the hall illuminating a staircase, its balusters casting a ladder of shadows on the wall. She was a silhouette, her pretty features unreadable in the darkness, while Oliver felt exposed. He resisted an urge to yawn and ease the tension in his jaw.