Falling From Grace

by Ann Eriksson

  Grace gathered us together. “Tell them all what you told me.” Grace handed the two men each a cup of steaming tea.

  They exchanged a glance. At a nod from his companion, Billy spoke up, “The company has their injunction. They’re sending the police in tomorrow.”

  A ripple of excitement ran through the audience. I glanced around for Paul, but he and Mary were nowhere to be seen.

  “Is this true?” Terry queried.

  Steam swirled up from the cup in Billy’s hands. “We got the word last night.”

  Terry clapped Billy on the shoulder. “Thank you.”

  “Tomorrow’s our big day,” Marcel declared.

  Grace handed the fallers a plate of cookies. “Sit down and tell them the rest,” she urged. “About why you’re here.”

  “It wasn’t our idea.” Chuck stared at his feet. “Donnie talked us into walking in with him.”

  “I won’t cut trees anymore,” Billy said in a quiet voice. “Especially trees with people in them.”

  Sue jumped from her perch on the cook stump. “You’re the jerks who walked into the clear-cut and tried to cut down the tree-sits?” She jabbed her finger at them. “You could have killed Jen.”

  Billy lowered his head and twisted his grease-stained fingers. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t blame us,” Chuck argued. “It was Ransom. We stopped him.”

  “Leave them be,” Grace argued. “They’re on our side now.”

  Terry stepped forward and put his hand on the boy’s arm. “What else can you tell us?”

  “We—they’ll be at the gate at dawn tomorrow,” Billy answered, then straightened. “I’ll stand on the road with you,” he announced. He glanced at his companion.

  Chuck nodded slowly. “Cutting the big ones—” he confessed. “The sound when they hit the ground makes me sick.” He put his mug on a stump. “Besides, once they’re gone we’ll all be out of a job.”

  Grace convinced Billy and Chuck to stay for dinner, Terry promising them a ride home before dark.

  “We stay in town, but you can take us to my mother’s house. She lives on the lake,” Billy said.

  “In the native village?” Terry asked, a note of surprise in his voice.

  The boy dipped his head in acknowledgement.

  Esther and Mary served bowls of pasta and bread fresh from Esther’s oven. Chuck accepted the offer of a camp chair; Billy chose to sit on the ground against a log.

  “Who’s this Ransom guy who tried to fall Jen’s tree?” Terry asked.

  Billy opened his mouth, closed it, and then looked at Chuck as if seeking permission. Chuck studied his plate, then cleared his throat nervously. “He’s our best faller.”

  “What’s his problem?”

  “His wife is sick.”

  “No excuse.” Sue punctuated her words with her spoon. “He could have killed our friends.”

  “We can’t speak for him.” Chuck met her eyes. “But both of us kill trees every day.”

  “But trees are not people.” Terry swivelled around to face Chuck. “There’s a big difference.”

  Sue groaned.

  “Is there?” Mr. Kimori said quietly from the back of the group where he leaned against the trunk of a tree.

  “My grandfather taught me each tree has a song,” Billy said quietly, digging the heel of his boot into the dirt.

  “Leave the poor boys alone,” Grace said,

  Chuck set his bowl on the ground. “I do it for the money.”

  “The company says we’re turning decadent forest into productive tree farms,” Billy said, dark eyes focusing on a hole in the knee of his trousers.

  “And you believe them?” Chris asked.

  “No.” Billy raised his head, expression defiant. “I do it for the money too.”

  Marcel leaned over and squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Hey, we all need to make a living. I helped fish the cod to extinction. What is important is that we are here.”

  Billy managed a thin smile.

  “You know,” Chuck said. “The older guys we work with, like Ransom, know more about trees than anyone.”

  “But they cut them down,” Sue retorted.

  “You use lumber, don’t you?” Chuck threw back at her.

  “There’s a native group from the area talking to the province,” Terry interrupted. “Our board’s trying to connect with them.”

  “Why haven’t we seen them here?” Chris asked.

  “Lots of people from my village work in forestry like me,” Billy said.

  “Like you used to, you mean.” Chuck nudged him with an elbow.

  Sue whistled through her fingers.

  “We should go.” Billy handed Grace his plate. “Thank you for the food.” Terry reached into his pocket for his keys. “But tomorrow morning,” Billy added, “we will see you again . . . on the road.”

  I didn’t know what to make of this turn of events. The police would be busy. I rinsed out my dishes. I planned on an early night; tomorrow was a big day for us too.

  • • •

  An impromptu party erupted. A substantial amount of liquor and pot materialized out of tents and backpacks. Marcel pulled out a flute no one knew he possessed, Esther a harmonica. Chris and Sue lit a fire on the gravel bank. Mary leaped to her feet, twirling and gyrating to the music. Her long tangled hair, her skirt, swirled out away from her lithe body. She wore earrings and a necklace she and Rainbow had fashioned out of lichen, her feet bare. A fairy out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, dancing away the longest day of the year. A beauty. An irresistible siren to helpless men. She pulled Rainbow up with her, the girl laughing. The two grasped wrists and circled faster and faster until Rainbow’s feet left the ground, airborne. An unexpected surge of affection for the child swept through me. Heaven knows why she likes me. I watched the pair, mother and daughter, the grip of Mary’s hand on Rainbow’s, the force of their revolutions pulling Rainbow outward, those tentative bonds, easily broken, the potential hurt. On the other side of the fire, Grace watched them too, clapping in time with the music, foot tapping, until Sue grabbed her hand and urged her to her feet. No ballerina in her fleece trousers and vest, knobby soled hiking boots, but her poise and style shone through, in the way she moved her arms, the tilt of her head. Marcel invited me to dance, but I declined. My repertoire of talents didn’t include dancing, and never in the presence of Grace. Terry arrived back and before he could protest, Sue shoved a beer into his hand and slapped him on the back before dancing off. Before long he joined the frenzied mass in the firelight at the edge of the river. A full moon broke above the tops of the trees and shed an eerie glow over the scene of merry anarchy.

  Rumour had it two buses of supporters would leave Victoria in the middle of the night and arrive on the road by dawn. Rumour also had it a group of loggers planned to blockade the buses on the way.

  “Don’t worry,” Terry said. “The buses will have police protection.”

  “Until the cops, they arrest you,” Marcel joked and nervous laughter ran through the group.

  I kept to the edge of the party, sipping rum and orange juice made from crystals in a tin mug, uneasy, the mood tense, the laughter too loud, the dancing too furious. The trashing of the camp, the threat to the tree-sitters had unnerved the protesters; tomorrow they would lay their freedom on the road with their bodies. To what end? I watched Paul follow Marcel in a step dance, their heavy boots pounding down on the ground, Marcel in time to the music, Paul out of sync and elastic legged, their faces red with laughter. The sight of Paul made me want to weep. Tomorrow night he would go up the hemlock with the video camera. People in jail wouldn’t stop the logging. But an elusive brown and white seabird just might.

  11

  I made my way back to my tent to find Rainbow’s sleeping bag missing; I recalled seeing it draped around her shoulders on the other side of the fire. Mary’s kids didn’t seem to have bedtimes. Flicking on my headlamp, I retrieved a journal article from a plastic folder and burr
owed into my bag to read. The article described a new species of fly discovered in ancient temperate rainforests. The male genitalia are distinctive, especially the broad posterior surstylus lobe with its scalelike bristles. I yawned and read the line again. The male genitalia are distinctive . . . The words seemed to melt away before they reached my brain. I tried one more time. The male genitalia . . .”Oh, forget it.” I snapped off the light and stuffed the paper and headlamp into a tent pocket. I zipped the sleeping bag up to my neck and listened for wild sounds in the dark, but other than the distant noise from the human revellers, the forest was quiet. All the animals had fled the party too.

  I woke to the sound of unsteady footsteps shuffling through gravel followed by the whine of a zipper. A body fell through the doorway into the tent with a grunt. I jerked from a fitful dream where one step forward resulted in two steps back. Bear? I froze, heart racing. Bears can’t undo zippers. “Rainbow?” I whispered and the mass at the foot of my bedroll whimpered in response. It was too large to be the little girl and it smelled of wood smoke, pot, beer, and sweat. I fumbled for my headlamp, a meagre weapon, and switched it on, ready to fight. Paul’s face crumpled in a grimace at the sudden glare of light and he tilted away from me, his sleeping bag gripped in his arms like a teddy bear.

  “Paul?” I jiggled his shoulder. “Wake up.”

  He half opened his eyelids, the blood-shot whites visible through the slit. Outside, I could still hear the distant sounds of partying, the raspy melody of a harmonica, laughter.

  I shook him again. “Where’s Rainbow?”

  “Mary.” He heaved his head and shoulders across my lap. “Mary doesn’t want me anymore,” he mumbled.

  “She kicked you out, did she?”

  His head rubbed against my legs in what I could only assume was a “yes.”

  I should tell him about Cougar. Cushion his heartbreak. He buried his face in my stomach. He was too out of it, the taletelling would have to wait until morning. I stroked his hair. He trembled, the heat from his body sifting into mine.

  “You’re my friend, Faye,” he moaned moss-mouthed into my belly button. “I love you.”

  My fingers stopped their passage through his hair. His words conjured up a dust storm of emotion. Give it up, Pearson, I chastised myself. The fool’s drunk. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. An addled declaration of affection the most I could hope for, this night a stolen gift, his head in my lap.

  “I love you too, Paul,” I whispered, his response a ragged snore. “Christ.” I shoved him off my lap onto the bare floor and covered him with his sleeping bag. “Idiot,” I said out loud into the dark night, not sure if my accusation was directed at him or at myself. I doused the light and burrowed deep into my bag. The music had stopped. Overhead the wind rushed through the tops of the trees. It would be a roller-coaster ride up in the canopy tonight.

  I dreamed of falling. Drifting, weightless, a single needle from the top of a thousand-year-old redcedar, unheeded by the dark and silent world, spiralling through moss-laden branches like a lone snowflake before a storm. I accelerated, plunging headlong to earth through the canopy, whipped by limbs, breaking twigs, tearing sheets of ragbag lichen from the bark, the dusty white debris falling with me, a kaleidoscope of colours flashing by.

  I didn’t hit the ground. Instead I woke to find Paul’s arm and a leg draped across mine, his body warm against my side, our sleeping bags in disarray.

  Trapped under the weight of his limbs, chest hairs and the smell of him in my nose, I lay still, uncertain what to do. His ribcage rose and fell against me, and if I concentrated, I could hear his heartbeat; the rhythm burned into me, setting me afire. How long I had wanted this. Flaming as I fall.

  I’m a fool.

  “Paul,” I whispered, then louder. “Paul.” I pushed his arm away and he shifted, stirred, his lips in my hair. His hand slid across my abdomen. A wave of yearning swept over me. His fingers slipped under the bottom edge of my shirt, scrolling patterns on my skin. The night was black as coal.

  “Sweetheart,” he murmured against my cheek, his breath sour. His fingers inched under the waistband of my long johns and into the folds between my legs. I closed my eyes, the rising desire unbearable. He thrust the fabric below my knees in two clumsy movements.

  He rolled on top of me and covered my mouth with his. His weight pinned me to the ground. Instead of pushing him away, I found myself kissing him back, his beard rough on my face. His musky scent overwhelmed me. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, my reach inadequate. How many years had I wished to feel him like this? His amulet pressed into my skin. He rose up, the white glow of the tooth swaying in the air above my face as he entered me.

  The briefest of moments. The first domino in a line of tumbling dominoes, stretching into the months and years to come. His body stiffened, he grunted and fell still, his weight pinning me beneath him. I suspected he’d fallen asleep, but then he slid off onto his side, stretched out beside me, and nuzzled my hair, breath hot in my ear. His fingers resumed their downward journey. His mouth formed words I will never forget. “Mary Mary, quite contrary.”

  A tsunami of anger crashed over me. I brought up my knees and grabbed his arm. “I’m not Mary.” I forced his hand along my arm from shoulder to fingertip. “See, short arms, Paul.” I sat up and wrenched the sleeping bag away. “Stunted legs. I’m Faye. Not Mary. Faye,” I shouted.

  Paul jumped away and onto his knees. “Faye?” he sputtered, head bent forward, hunched over, a spectral shadow against the blousy fabric of the ceiling. “I thought . . . aghh.” His voice faded into the strangled sound of a snared animal. He fumbled for the flashlight and turned it on, the half-dome space illuminated by its indirect glow.

  He stared into my face, eyes wild. He groaned, fumbled for the sleeping bag, and drew it around me. “I . . . are you all right?”

  I dried tears from my face with the edge of the bag and pulled up my semen-soaked underwear, the air sharp with its musky odour. I wanted to gag. I wanted to suck the semen off my fingers. I wanted to push him to the ground and do it again. I wanted to hit him.

  He raised his palms and gazed at them as if they were foreign. “I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

  What was I to do? Forgive him? Wind back time ten minutes? Forgive myself?

  “I’m not,” I answered.

  Weariness overtook me. I huddled into my bag and turned my back on him. A few minutes later I heard him zip up his own sleeping bag. He clicked off the flashlight, plunging the small space into welcome darkness. I listened for the sound of his breath. After a long while, welcome sleep stole both of us away.

  12

  A pileated woodpecker drummed into the trunk of a nearby snag already riddled with insect galleries and beetle bores. Unable to sleep, I crawled from the tent at dawn, careful not to wake Paul, unwilling to meet his eyes, rehash the drama of the night without a chance to think. A ghostly figure in a white nightgown rattled a pot on a stove on the other side of the clearing. I was surprised to find any of the protesters up before dawn after the late-night festivities. But today was a big day. Their next night on a hard cot in a jail cell.

  I grabbed an apple and walked the downstream trail west for an hour. The morning light expanded into the spaces between the trees. One day last year Paul and I had hiked the trail all the way to the ocean, a two-day trip there and back on a rough and muddy path. We’d camped in the open on a gravel beach above the high tide line and in behind a sheltering root wad at least the height of two men. Past midnight the scream of a cougar from the bush adjacent to the beach shocked us awake, the sound like the terrified cry of a woman. I shivered at the memory of the eerie call. Was it ten steps away? A thousand? We listened for the cat to scream again, the sky overhead crowded with stars and moonless, but heard only the grack of tree frogs in the grasses at the edge of the beach. We woke at morning light to find a grey whale feeding in the bottom mud near shore. Its calloused head broke the water’s surface, the poof of its ex
halation a quiet punctuation on the day’s evolution.

  I perched on a car-sized boulder above the creek and watched a stick twirl in an eddy. The current caught and swept it away. In the fall, returning salmon would batter their way up from the ocean to spawn in the gravel beds and die.

  The ultimate symbol of the cycle of life. Unlike the salmon, I knew I’d never travel that cycle. Sure, I’d been born, would live, and will die and rot like everyone else. But the rest wasn’t in the cards. A mate. Reproduction. Not because I couldn’t, I possessed all the right parts, a normal-sized torso, a vagina, a womb, the requisite needs and emotions. But men went for the best specimens. The biological imperative. Tessa, Mary. I chucked another stick into the eddy, and thought about an incident in high school. I couldn’t recall the boy’s name, but I remembered he was tall, athletic, and on the honour roll, all the prime genetic traits. Grace, in her usual Samaritan zeal, urged me to swallow my suspicions and accept his unexpected invitation out. “Give him a chance to get to know you. How could he not like you?” He left a note on my locker the day after he failed to show up at the movie theatre, poignant with its stick people illustrations and the scrawled words, You’ve got to be kidding! “We had a nice time, Grace,” I’d reported to my mother, “but he’s not my type.” I understood why he’d done it. I was different, strange. An oddity like the white bears on the central coast, the golden spruce in Haida Gwaii, the rare albino crows on the island.

  I started back toward camp. After the spawn, bears would drag the rotting fish carcasses up the bank and into the forest, as far as the top of the ridge, to feast on the protein-rich stomach and brain, leaving the remains to the gulls, the eagles, the decomposing insects, the bones fertilizer for forest trees. Nitrogen from salmon laced the heartwood of these rainforest trees, the boundaries between plant and animal blurred. Trees dining on fish, served by black bear waiters. But the banquet had dwindled, streams decimated by logging no longer supporting large runs of salmon. A dipper landed on a rock upstream. It checked the pool for food with its slender bill, its small grey body bobbing up and down, dip, dip. No salmon eggs nestled in the sediments today, the surviving fry long hatched and gone to the sea.