by Lee Gowan
The fence is still there.
JANUARY 2nd, 1971: NEAR BROKEN HEAD
“I SING OF IRENE,” sang the man on the radio, his voice dark and rumbling and plaintive with a terrible wanting. Irene turned it up. She had never heard the song before, and she would never hear it again. Perhaps there never was such a song. Luke took his right hand off the steering wheel, turned off the music, then replaced the hand at two o’clock. “Driver rules the airwaves,” he’d said before they left the reserve, though at the time he’d been joking about a Beatles song that Irene liked and he couldn’t stand. He said nothing now. He’d said nothing all morning, and nothing all through lunch while he’d picked at his French fries, and nothing all afternoon.
The cold was on the verge of cracking the pale blue and grey sky. Forty below. The sundogs had their prey surrounded and were closing in for the kill. On either side of the highway, the bleached stubble poked up through the sparse snow. Ahead of them, to the west, the sky was boiling, and they could see they were driving into something nasty. She could peer out to the north through the oval portal of plastic stuck to her side window. Around the opening, the window was opaque with frost.
Every bump and ridge the Studebaker passed over gave her a small jolt.
One day ago they had been so happy. It was the first day of 1971, and they were purposely beginning the year by heading out two days earlier than they’d planned, having decided it would be appropriate to start their new life on the first day of January. Unfortunately, they didn’t get started until after noon because Luke had stayed at the New Year’s Eve party and drank more than he should have, but even that didn’t matter. Even hungover, Luke was still happy, and she was happy, and the road pointed out in front of them in a way that made her certain anything was possible. They were driving into a future that was theirs, together, and nothing could stop them.
But then they’d made their first mistake. To save money, they decided to stay at her aunt and uncle’s place in Winnipeg. Her uncle was hungover too, and he gave Luke a hard time about the Studebaker. Where did his cousin get it? Where was the registration? What would they tell the Mounties if they were stopped?
Luke’s cousin had bought it off a bald man named Curly in the parking lot of a convenience store. Told Curly he liked his car, and the man said he’d sell it to him for thirty-five dollars. The registration was lost somehow, but there were papers at the cousin’s in Calgary proving it was his cousin’s and properly insured, and that’s what Luke would tell the police.
Irene’s uncle was not satisfied and kept repeating variations on the questions over and over, and he told Irene there was no way he’d let her go any farther with a Blackfoot who papered himself in so thin a story. Her father would never forgive him, he said, though it was he who would never forgive her father for being a lazy Indian and staying on the reserve. Luke said her uncle was no better than a white man, and it was true that her uncle hated Indians as much as any white man she’d yet met despite the fact that he was one himself.
“My grandfather warned me that you Cree are all a bunch of bad apples.” These were the last words Luke had spoken last night as they lay in the dark on the pullout couch in the basement. Even after he was snoring, Irene lay awake a long time, listening to the whistle in his nose until it was drowned out by the roar of the furnace. She prayed to Jesus to let Luke see that she loved him with a love as pure and strong as the Lord’s love for all mankind. There was only one tribe in the Lord’s eyes. She prayed to Jesus to show her the way to make Luke’s heart as strong as hers.
On this second day of 1971, they got up before sunrise and left. Her aunt got up too, and insisted on making them breakfast even though Irene told her not to worry, that they’d get something on the road. Her aunt mentioned that the radio said it was already blizzarding in Calgary, where they were heading, and they’d probably hit it in Saskatchewan. Luke didn’t say a word, just ate his eggs and toast and went out and started the Studebaker to warm it up. Her uncle did not even get up to try and stop her. She’d thought the leaving would satisfy Luke that she was on his side but it had not done so. Maybe it was only that he had the need to feel wronged and, as she was the only one present she’d have to skin the goat.
Love was such a terrible puzzle. What if she were to reach across and touch the hand that had turned off the radio? Would that erase the wrong? Or would he tell her not to touch him and make the whole thing worse? Or would he pretend not even to notice that she was touching him and make things worse in a different way? Did he just need more time to burn out the anger her uncle had stoked in him? A man’s anger was a fire too hot for cooking, her mother had once told her. Or had that just been something she’d heard in another song on the radio? Another song she had perhaps never heard at all.
The ′52 Studebaker was the same age she was, Irene had pointed out to her uncle, trying to lighten the mood of their talk, and how could that not be a good sign?
Because there’s nothing the same in a car and a girl, her uncle had replied. At eighteen years a girl’s still a girl, but a car that’s eighteen years has already covered too many miles and seen too much road and run down too many gophers, and this one has too much mystery in its cracked lamps and dented body. Don’t ride in a mystery unless you’re wanting to arrive in a mysterious place.
Which meant nothing to Irene, for wasn’t every place but the reserve a mystery to her? Life was one long beautiful question to which the Lord’s love was the only answer, even on a forty below afternoon with a lover who would not allow her song to be sung. But she should not even think that. That was not fair to Luke. Even in his silence he was singing her song with a deep plaintive wanting, singing his need and his love and his terrible possession. Her mother had told her that Luke was so in love he was afraid of her. Her mother could see these things.
Her mother was generally right. Knowing this, she could not help reaching across and touching him, but on the leg instead of the hand. He looked down at her fingers there on his leg, before he looked into her eyes.
“What do you want?” he finally said.
“I want to hear you still have a voice,” she told him, and gave his leg a squeeze.
“Well, now you’ve heard,” he said.
“Not good enough,” she said. “You won’t let the man on the radio sing to me, so I want you to sing me a song.”
“I’m driving,” he said.
“All right. I’ll sing to you, then.”
And she sang him a Beatles song that maintained that all that was needed was love.
“The Beatles broke up,” Luke said when she was finished what she knew, which was not all that much. Not that there was much to begin with, so far as she recalled.
“I heard.”
“So, a lot of good love did them.”
“Maybe they didn’t have enough of it.”
She started to sing it again. There were not many words to the song.
“That would explain them singing about needing it.”
“It would.”
“It would.”
Her hand was still on his leg, and he glanced at it again.
“Your uncle don’t have much love for me, do he?”
“You want my uncle to love you?”
“No, but I wouldn’t mind his respect. I’m bigger on respect than love. That’s me. If I was to write a song, that’s what it would be about.”
“Maybe you haven’t had enough respect. That makes you want to sing about needing it.”
“Maybe.”
She leaned over and kissed his cheek.
“I respect you,” she whispered in a breathy voice. “How do I respect you? Let me count the ways. I respect you like a winter morning. Forty below.”
He gave her a suspicious look. “I hope not.”
“Why not?”
“Because you respect a winter morning because it’ll kill you if you don’t. That’s not why I want you to respect me.”
“But I do. It would kil
l me not to respect you.”
“Is that so? I doubt it.”
“You don’t believe that not enough respect can kill?”
“I do.”
“Well, then?”
“You’re confusing me,” he said, and looked again at her hand on his leg.
“Oh. Sorry. Does my hand confuse you?”
“No. Your mouth. Your hand’s not confusing at all.”
“Good.”
“It’s distracting, though. Your hand isn’t showing enough respect for the road.”
She took her hand away.
He glanced longingly in the direction her hand had gone, and then into her eyes.
“Maybe we should stop and talk about this some more,” he said.
“No. It only confuses you,” she said. He turned back to the road. “Tell you what,” she said, “let’s go somewhere and make respect to each other with our hands.”
He seemed to like the idea. “Somewhere off the highway?”
“That’s probably a good idea. You can’t make proper respect worrying about other people watching.”
Luke pulled off on the next grid road and drove south a couple of miles until they came to a clump of Scotch pine that had been planted around a farm, now abandoned. There was not much snow on the driveway, so they pulled into the yard. A deer turned and fled through the pine, waving its white tail at them.
Luke left the car running.
His lips were on her breast, her fingers in his hair, cupping his ears, when Irene noticed that the wind was beginning to pick up. The snow had begun to gust across the ground. Even though they’d stopped, the weather was still coming. She considered pointing this out to Luke, but he was so interested in what he was doing that it did not seem fair. A change, she thought. A wind means change, and on such a cold day that could only be good news in the long run. He had already begun to kiss her belly, and she lifted her bum so he could pull off her pants.
JUNE 25th, 2000: NEAR BROKEN HEAD
SAM GAVE UP ON WORK to drink a cold beer and sit out on a patio chair in front of the house, waiting for his family to come back to him. And they did. Gwen and the boys drove into the yard in Vern’s pickup truck. The Buick had started making a funny noise near Neville and stopped running altogether just this side of Lac Pelletier, and she’d phoned Vern to come and get them.
“Why didn’t you call me?” Sam asked.
“I tried, but it was busy. Anyway, I thought maybe Vern would be able to get it going. No such luck. I guess it’s something serious.”
Vern had wandered to the edge of the yard and, with his back to them, was pissing under the flowering plum.
“Well, that’s … a problem,” Sam said. “I have to take my car to the airport in the morning.”
“You’re going to Toronto tomorrow?”
“Yes. You know that. How are your parents?”
“Dad’s fine. Mom says hello.”
Sam scooped Ben up into his arms. “Did you guys have fun?”
“Sure.” Michael shrugged. “We made cookies.”
“How much do you love me, Dad?” Ben asked.
“A million billion.”
“Do you love me more than you love Michael?”
“No!” Michael said.
“I love you the same,” Sam said.
Ben grinned one of his sly little grins. “Is it okay if I love Mommy more than I love you?”
Sam nodded slowly. “Sure, that’s fine.” He set him down next to his brother. “Go and wash your hands and get ready for supper.”
Sam had been on the phone for only a few minutes the entire day, talking to his parents. Oh, yes—and answering a wrong number from some girlfriend of Vern’s. What were the odds that Gwen’s phone call would have come during those few moments? Perhaps Vern’s latest conquest had blocked Gwen’s emergency, so that she had had to turn to Vern. Sam imagined a scantily clad young woman calling Vern’s number a moment later and finding it busy, the call she had blocked now blocking hers, so that Vern would not get laid that night after all. It made him feel better as he faced Vern’s gloating grin, flushed from the effort of playing cavalry.
“No problem, little brother. You’d do the same for me.”
But Vern would never have a wife for Sam to rescue. When Vern wasn’t eating their mother’s or Gwen’s cooking, he existed on frozen pizza or drove to town for shrimp and ribs and a beer at the Eye, where he could check out the ladies. Vern’s life was too big for just one woman.
“Do you want to stay for supper?” Gwen asked him.
“What are ya havin’?”
She turned to Sam, redirecting the question his way.
“Well, I didn’t know when you were coming,” he said. “We could barbecue hamburgers.”
She turned back to Vern. “Hamburgers?”
“Sure.”
“No better offers?”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t wanna deprive you of my company.”
“Oh, don’t worry about us,” Sam said.
Sam’s acreage was a postage stamp of prairie stuck on the northeast border of his father’s land. When his father refused to take money for a corner of the Big Pasture—Old Sam had called it Janson’s, after the man he’d bought it from, but Sam’s father had always called it the Big Pasture—insisting that Sam should just build there if he wanted, Sam had bought forty acres from their most despised neighbour.
The house was dug into the side of the valley, facing south towards the creek. The three side walls were concrete and the south wall a plane of glass broken only by narrow vertical stanchions. There wasn’t another view like it in the world. The house wasn’t too hard on the eye either, especially in the evening, when the bare inner walls (Sam had, after long negotiation, convinced Gwen that her needlepoint should be hung in the spare room) glowed out into the night like polished metal. The lines were clean and straight. The roof was flat, so that after one particularly bad blizzard Sam had had to get Vern to come and help him shovel off the snow before the winter came in on them. Generally this wasn’t a problem though, as flat roofs were well suited to the prairie climate of abundant wind and little moisture.
A senior vice president on reconnaissance had come for a barbecue once and was so taken by Sam’s place that he’d told a friend of his who published a lifestyle magazine and Sam’s postage stamp ended up in a nationally distributed photo spread. Gwen did not share Sam’s modernist leanings, preferring a home to look domestic, and for years she’d complained that Sam’s star architect had created something to match his cold heart. She felt like she was living in an institution: a hospital, an airport, a bank, maybe a funeral home, she wasn’t sure which. So when the photographer showed up that June morning and she proudly escorted him from room to room, Sam couldn’t help teasing her about her sudden enthusiasm for their model home.
“What’d you expect me to do? Insult his lack of taste? I’m not that crude.”
Despite her protestations, Sam once came home to find Gwen gazing at that magazine. “Our house looks pretty good in these pictures,” she admitted, before her face transformed into a wicked grin. “Maybe that’s where it really belongs.”
The photo spread had happened about five years ago, when their marriage still worked, more or less. Sometimes, when Sam got home, Michael was already in bed, but Gwen didn’t complain about his lateness. She didn’t eat with Michael so that she could have dinner with Sam, and she’d light candles in the dining room, and they’d sit and talk about his day and Michael’s day and his family and her family and what was blooming in the garden, and after dinner they’d go out and sit in the dying light watching the world get dark. He felt that this might be what was known as happiness.
That’s all he really wanted, was for everyone to be happy. That was why he worked so hard and traded his portfolio so carefully. He’d done very well indeed, and they would never have to worry about money. Both boys’ university educations were already paid for.
Like Gwen, Michael thou
ght the magazine article was cool, and he showed the glossy pictures to all his friends. But the photo spread didn’t impress Sam’s father or his brother, who still claimed Sam’s house was a glorified cardboard box.
“You know why he makes you live in that thing, Gwen?” Vern had joked in the middle of last Thanksgiving dinner. “It’s because Dad bought Mom a freezer when we were kids, and they gave Sam the box to make himself a playhouse. I guess he musta spent his happiest moments in there and now he’s trying to recreate them. Come to think of it, the inside of your house looks a lot like the inside of that freezer.”
Vern house’s, the trailer where Sam and Gwen had lived while they were waiting for their house to be built, was considerably more like that freezer box than Sam’s beautiful home, but Sam didn’t bother to do anything more than think this retort. Instead, he left before the pumpkin pie with the excuse that he needed to catch up on some paperwork.
“What difference does it make?” Sam had asked their mother years before, on the morning he’d announced he would be leaving in the middle of harvest to start working towards a bachelor of commerce. “Dad’s got Vern. Why does he need me?” She had no reply except that look in her eye that suggested there might be an entire universe trapped inside her head. Some sappy country-and-western song twanged on the radio. Sam would always associate the steel guitar with that awful moment.
When he returned with his M.B.A., taking the job in Broken Head over a multitude of other possibilities that would have been more favourable for his career, it was to please Gwen, his high school sweetheart, who had followed him to Vancouver to do her undergraduate degree and had accidentally become pregnant just as he was beginning his M.B.A. For a whole week she’d been afraid to tell him, and when she finally did he was so angry he marched out of the apartment without a word and went to an afternoon movie at one of those theatres the size of a living room they built in shopping malls back then. It was a foreign film, and he was the only one in the theatre. Something from South America about a man facing some direction or other. He didn’t remember a thing about the film. After the movie he walked back to the apartment. Gwen was at the kitchen sink, weeping into her dishwater. He took her into his arms, kissed the back of her neck, and asked her to marry him.