More often, she seemed to be suffering from a quiet kind of pain. Shane could tell when she had a little strength, for then she would hold Victoria close to her. At night, he could sometimes tell that the disease was tormenting her.
One night when she was suffering, he got out of bed, put his moccasins and toque on, and lit the oil lamp. He put the lamp on the table and gathered up all the medicines the doctors had given him. He placed them next to the lamp and looked them over. Theresa was moaning quietly at the pain she was experiencing.
The doctors had explained the effects of all the medicines to Shane. They had described the recommended doses at various stages of her illness. Shane had administered different doses of the several medicines over a period of time. The doctors told him that at some point — when the suffering became very intense — the dose needed to deal with all the pain might prove lethal.
Shane sat for a while and looked at the medicine bottles. Then he walked over without any medicine and sat on the bed and looked at her.
After a few moments, she awoke and looked up at him.
He looked at her with sorrow in his eyes. “I wish I could do something to relieve your pain,” he said. “If only there was something I could do.”
She didn’t answer for a time. Then she said, “There is.” It was hard for her to talk.
“What is it?”
“Speak to me in Indian.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
I
Shane was no longer interested in making snowshoes. Hunting was not possible. The newly fallen snow had no animal tracks; in the first deep cold of the winter, the animals were hardly moving around. Even had they been, his enthusiasm was not there. Nor could he develop an interest in attempting to catch some northern pike through the ice.
It seemed to be getting dark in the middle of the afternoon now. Shane prepared supper for the three of them. After they — now meaning him and the baby — ate, he washed the dishes and tried to read for a while. When, inevitably, his concentration was not there, he went to bed.
One night when the oil lamp was out and they were in bed, she said to him, “You’ll put trillium on the grave?”
Shane promised.
He went out just before Christmas and came back with a small spruce tree. Set in a corner of the cabin, it was the only note of lightness in an otherwise doleful time. He tried to sing Christmas songs to the baby, but with Theresa unable to participate, it was only a pathetic effort. He made for Victoria a little straw doll that she would be able to play with in a few months.
It snowed heavily the night of Christmas. Snow covered two windows and continued to fall all night. This was their warmest night. The snow left an absolute silence. Theresa whispered to him that it was just this kind of peace that they had sought when they came to Lac des Îles.
Just after Christmas, a bitter cold was visited upon Lac des Îles. Drinking water in the pail in the cabin was frozen solid in the mornings. Shane could not fold back the heavy quilt covering Theresa until he had lit the wood stove, and until he was sure that the cabin was quite warm. As soon as it was warm enough, he pulled back all the covers save one.
Theresa no longer seemed to hear or understand when Shane read to her in the evening before he came to bed. She was gone now, gone to any of the vital forces she had once known. Hers was a wasted body and no more.
As Shane finished reading one evening, she motioned for him to come near.
“Bring the baby to bed,” she whispered.
Shane took Victoria from the hanging cradle and placed her between the two of them. He held them both close to him all night.
In the morning, Theresa was dead.
He buried her beneath a small stand of pine trees in back of the cabin. He worked all day with axe and shovel to get through the frozen ground. And all he thought about was how much life was gone from his life.
He planted trillium over the grave when the snow went. The lilies of the forest kept her and bobbed up and down in the breezes of spring.
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