Since then the player had come out on special occasions. But only if her father was not home and only Beethoven’s Fifth. They didn’t own any other LPs. Not that she cared. I’m twelve years old, she thought, and happy to be hearing it again: the trickery of the notes being placed and replaced, the mighty crashes, the steady balancers, those lifting complicated sections that made her think of how it might be, the experience, that thing they called love –
A truck lumbered along the road.
Annie touched her mother’s hand, signed quickly. Helen nodded, raised the needle, lifted the LP away from the turntable and slid it gently into its sleeve. Annie unplugged the power cord, closed and buttoned the case, placed it and the Beethoven LP back into the blanket box and pushed that box far under her bed.
Secretive and shy, mother and daughter smiled at each other. Moments later Annie was drawing bright-coloured cartoon animals and Helen was boiling the kettle when her husband tugged off his boots, unlatched the door and limped into the cabin.
A while back, maybe a year, maybe longer, she had asked her father, ‘Pappa, why do we live here?’
He’d been cleaning his boots, lever and scrape, always methodical. He’d said, ‘Annika?’
‘I just wondered –’
‘It is a good place,’ he told her. ‘It is quiet. The air is pure. No one will bother us.’
Back to the boots. Annie had sat on the veranda step and thought, but the air must be pure in many places and, besides, who would want to bother us? We’re just a little family, three people in a log cabin on the grey rim of the grey grasslands.
Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to be bothered occasionally?
She knew what they were, that was easy – but not knowing how they had come to be this way, that was the irritant. Lately she had been wondering more and more about her parents’ past. Their little histories. The steps that had been taken and why.
A lack of information, Annie decided, was more of a nuisance than wrong information. She had reached this decision because of another realisation: that she knew nothing about her parents that hadn’t occurred as part of her own life. It was as if they had been born at the same time, her keepers, inducted from thin air into this careful but subdued version of support. There were no old photos … unlike the Jefferson house, brimful of framed prints and collages and even paintings of various tight-lipped forebears. There were no letters that Annie knew of, no cards at Christmas, no phone calls from distant places, no stories of Uncle Him or Auntie Her, Cousin Whoever. No trace whatsoever. It was as if someone, God perhaps, had stolen these years from her parents, perhaps saying you don’t need these, they add nothing. They are outside The Plan.
Whatever that was. Sometimes on Fridays, after lessons with Ms Loveday in the barn that had been converted by Mr Jefferson to provide the local children with a wholesome junior education, Nancy Jefferson would wait until the others went home then allow Annie into their vast museum of a house. After a dramatic pause in the foyer to view the special painting – could anyone really feel so much love for a dead white horse, admittedly pretty but still dead? – Nancy would walk Annie around the perimeter of the space known as the Drawing Room – hard to breathe in there! – and point to the silver-framed photographs, saying things like, ‘That is my great-uncle William Forrest Jefferson, who lived to be ninety-nine,’ and ‘That is my cousin Airlie, who is the only precious child of Dadda’s sister Arleen, who lives in Winnipeg with her husband Gregory, in a penthouse no less.’
All the while Annie would coo and comment in an appropriate manner, saying, ‘She’s so pretty,’ or ‘I would love to visit Winnipeg, is it far?’ but feeling a sky-struck emptiness which equalled that of the surrounding prairies: she knew her own family could never hope to rival the Jefferson grip on Canadian soil.
When her father picked her up and asked about lessons, it was terribly annoying because Annie didn’t care for decimal equations or the War of 1812 – her head was spinning with unanswered questions about them! Where were her uncles and aunts? What about cousins? Unless her mother and father had been abandoned by elves beneath toadstools, she must have grandparents. Who and where were they?
The further she considered, the more specific the questions. Had her mother always been deaf and pretty much mute? Was her father the same as a child as he was now, drum-tight and private, waiting for something bad to happen? Had he always had those terrible, groaning dreams?
It was frustrating not to know. Even away from the cabin Annie felt that she lived in an enclosure. Oh, there were blessings, like her father said: the quiet when you wanted quiet, the animals skidding through each meandering day, summer sunshine weaving the wildflowers into a quilt of colours that couldn’t even be named, they were so special. Truth be told, Annie sometimes felt lucky – but then the wind blew extra hard and cold and her silent father clumped between fences or cried out at night and she forced herself to acknowledge the truth: it was something else that she wanted. Something that lived beyond the enclosure, and offered more energy than could ever be mustered from her tiny family in their tiny cabin and the enormity of the land that surrounded them. Beyond the Walls was what she wanted. Beyond the Walls there might be a different energy, that of other people playing and singing and chattering and living. More and more these days she wanted to join them, share their stories and games and hear their songs – participate! – but she couldn’t, because those walls had been carefully, precisely sculpted. They were smooth and high and impossible to climb.
Come winter, she knew, the snow would fall in drifts then come again as a pall that would sugar-frost the grass and the fringes of the trees, leaving white lines on the tops of the fence palings and the blades of the ploughs. The two hemispheres of their world, plant and air, would become strangely inverted, lighter sky colours lying on the earth, darker earth colours muddying the sky. Inside the cabin, the fire-licks in the hearth would be as elegant and welcome as silk while outside chunks of ice would snap and crunch as if each of their tiny mirrors had been made from the ground matter of discarded bones.
Early December. The snow had barely begun, sitting alongside the road in sullen pockets as the family took their monthly supply trip to Honey. Annie’s father needed a bigger shovel and maybe some new chains, depending on the price, but Annie was particularly excited because she had her roll of film in her pocket. Mr Nolan at the agency would be able to develop her photos and she’d have the prints by mid-afternoon, before the family came home.
They went there first then parked behind the wholesaler. Annie helped her mother with boxes and bags of oats, flour, corn, rice, powders and cans, batteries and candles. Her father bought a broad-bladed shovel and a bow saw, decided against the chains. A rare treat: they ate burgers in Grenadiers Café and Annie was allowed to sit for a few moments with Keira Krug, talk about nothing in particular and slurp a butterscotch milkshake.
By two-thirty in the afternoon she was back at the agency. Mr Nolan gave her the prints in a plain brown envelope. She was so nervous, she could hardly breathe ...
Oh, but they were blurred! Or deeply shadowed, the scenery turned to darkness. Two photos were utterly blacked out, others distorted, or smeared, or both. Annie shuffled through the pack, tears welling. Another dud. Another. What had she done wrong? Aim and press, what more was there to do? Her camera wasn’t like Nancy’s with its complicated dials and numbered settings, just a neat little Instamatic. Aim and press.
The truck rocked and shuddered along the cold stone road, the late afternoon sky falling quicker than the light. Annie chewed her lips, kept shuffling, crumpling –
The final photo was perfect.
She gazed in disbelief. After the horrors of the previous eleven prints, this one was a revelation. The spruces in a line like soldiers awaiting her command, the plucks and signatures of a surprisingly varied sky, the shifts in tone matching shifts in depth – she breathed in, hopeful again. Brought the photo closer to her eyes and saw –
> A bird. That bird!
She remembered the sharp kak-kak, how she had pointed her camera without seeing. Now the creature was with her in the rear of the truck, its body small within the scope of the image but clear enough for her to at least see some details – long black-grey tail and a muscular breast decorated with wavering stripes that made Annie think of tiny pencil lines. She knew most of the prairie birds – plovers and magpies, longspurs, the twittering sparrows that she fed from dishes in summer. Sometimes, when the moonlight fell in amber drools, she even saw owls scanning the fields for mice. But never before had she seen this particular bird.
That night she slept as if her body were a tide, rippling and rolling. There was a new fizz beneath her skin that could not be denied. She was up before the light. The day, when it came, was layered but colourless. As she wrapped her muffler and tightened her boots, a giant’s milky fingers prised back the edges of the earth.
Annie kept her tread soft until she was away from the cabin. Cold air scrubbed her cheeks and cleansed the liquid in her eyes. The ground crackled beneath her feet; the distant mountains were a brooding immovable block. As she passed a stream Annie saw shattered glass, blue-green shards flung amid the tawny stones.
She stopped at the head of a rise to gather her breath, looked back to the prairies and saw, instead, a great ocean. It was shivery and unending, and she imagined the ships of conquerors reaching towards fabled lands before a dripping sea monster, a bolt of lightning or a rogue wave split their timbers and sent them tumbling into the black.
Kak-kak! Kak-kak!
The bird! Annie rushed forward, eyes frantically searching the smudges in the trees … and there it was, just overhead, as imperial as a statue in a royal garden. She stopped, caught her breath and checked the bird’s black-grey tail, its striped breast and sharply hooked beak – but was struck most of all by the bird’s eyes. They were blood-red rubies, hard and glittery, and they were staring down – at her.
Much later in her life she would know that creating a friendship is like composing a song. She would understand that either activity must begin with a note of caution, for there is much work to be done. It is an impatience to commit too quickly to the rhythm and tempo, the unique signature and melody, that will bring those friendships, and songs, undone.
The bird stayed motionless, continued to stare. Annie wanted to reach out but an ancient fear held her in place. Would the bird choose to hurt her?
The frosted air seeped into her bones. Annie shivered but decided to remain in place and calm herself by memorising the bird’s contours, the remarkable construction of the thing. It was pleasing to do this – but unnerving when she lifted her eyes and found herself once more trapped within the bird’s steely gaze. The bird was not simply watching her, it was scouring deeply. Annie squirmed as her thoughts, hopes and memories were dug with great efficiency out of their burrows and tossed onto the hard ground like earth-bound creatures awaiting their deaths – mice and voles, slow-moving crickets, skinks and those black, shiny-backed bugs that stunk when squished.
Kak-kak!
Sunshine, no more than a vapour. She braved the bird’s eyes again and whispered, ‘What are you?’
The bird leaned its head to one side and offered a gentler, friendlier look, not unlike George Jefferson’s dimwit budgerigar when it was being cute for food.
Kak-kak!
Annie continued to gaze, ignoring the cold and the fresh wind. The bird slightly stretched its wings. She could see that, fully extended, those lovely shapes would create a broad and powerful span, strong enough to propel the bird into any space … Without warning the bird launched, dropping to a lower branch. Now, beneath the golden base of its beak, Annie could see its mouth, fixed to a grin that seemed to say – I’m in charge here and don’t you forget it!
Kak-kak!
It was music enough to make Annie think again about reaching out. She wanted to touch those zigzag breast feathers, feel their softness and the warm heartbeat beneath. She wondered about lifting a finger – just one! – to stroke the perfect sphere of the bird’s head, the curve of its back and the fluted tips of its wings. Surely it could do no harm –
‘Annika!’
Startled, she leaped back. There was a violent flurry of wind and noise as the bird opened itself, screeched its displeasure and fled into the giant bowl of the sky. Annie, shaking with fright, smelled her father’s wood dust and felt the strength of his arms before she saw him. She shrank into his grasp as he dragged her into the pulpy, spicy damp beneath the trees.
Although they could hear its call echoing across the prairie, the bird had gone. Annie was unable to speak. Her father held her shoulders, saying, ‘No, we must wait, Annika … we must wait.’
She could hear the strumming songs of the leaves, imagined their silhouettes lost in the sylvan light. She turned her face to the earth and wondered whether they’d be hidden like this for all time, their bones falling into a pit alongside those of the dinosaurs.
Finally, her father’s grip relaxed and he left her to peer up at the sky.
‘Come.’
Annie trudged behind him, glancing up occasionally to hate his broad back and painful tread. When they reached the fence line that marked their pocket of land, she stopped and cried out, ‘Why? Why did you do that?’
Her father’s turn was slow. ‘It was a hawk,’ he said. His face was impassive; he had never lost his temper with her.
‘But friendly,’ she said desperately. ‘He wouldn’t –’
‘A hunter,’ he countered. ‘Dangerous.’ But his tone softened when he said to her, ‘You must stay away. A hunter will not hurt you if you stay away.’
Annie knew that was the end of the matter. No more … there was never any more. Her father made his rare pronouncements, their lives wobbled a little, shifted back to their usual line, continued. Once she had welcomed this as decisiveness. She’d even been proud, thinking, my father knows these things, he is strong, my protector. But today she hated it. Today she wanted to scream and fight, and most of all she wanted to return to the shadowy edge of the spruce forest and rediscover the bird.
It was pointless to turn her protest elsewhere. Her mind could already hear her mother’s voice emerging in difficult, woollen tones, see her fingers forming hesitant sentences.
‘You must listen to your pappa.’
Why?
‘Pappa knows what is best.’
Does he? How? What has he ever done to make him so – knowing?
Once when they were alone by firelight she had signed and spoken, ‘Mamma, where did you and Pappa meet?’
It was always hard for her mother. Annie had grown with this but she had come to think of the words in Helen’s mouth as oversized beasts trying to squeeze down a narrow chute. Sadly, not all the beasts made it through, and those that did were usually broken, their bodies tumbling indistinctly onto the flat, dead grass.
‘Vancouver,’ said her mother, also signing.
That great magical city, of which Annie could only dream. A moment before daring ... ‘Then why did you leave your family? Why did you come here?’
Her mother’s placid face had been cut to profile by the flicker of the fire. She was a handsome woman: her features were uncluttered and mannish, and she had the darker skin of the northerner.
She’d said, ‘I have no family.’
No family? But –
‘I was an orphan,’ Helen had continued, the words falling with difficulty. ‘Your pappa was also alone. Even when we were together, he did not feel safe. We left the city so that the three of us would be safe.’
Annie’s assumption, that she’d been born where she’d been raised, beneath the colossal sky –
‘Three of us?’ she had asked.
‘Yes, three,’ her mother had said, using her fingers to smile.
The schoolhouse contained four long work desks and a trestle for painting, a chalkboard, two display boards, a coloured globe, cupboards for their
notebooks and pencils, a box of hoops, quoits and ropes, another box for the chess sets, draughts and decks of cards, a sink for washing, a yellow crackled fridge with a light inside that flickered and sometimes didn’t come on at all, and a bookcase laden with novels, books of poems and the full set of Encyclopaedia Britannica.
She found the entry under H and read quickly … Accipiter family … common to more northerly forests … tall trees … high elevations …
‘Want to skip?’ asked Nancy. ‘For once, Brenda is willing.’
That over-eager girl, gap-toothed and awkward. Annie kept her finger on the page to mark her place but Nancy had already peeped.
‘Birds,’ she said dismissively. ‘How stupid.’
In her usual quick-fire manner Nancy relayed her theory of birds – ridiculous creatures unless you considered them to be pretty, which they weren’t, not ever, uh-uh. George’s budgie Alfonso was oh-so-typical, an ugly little critter with an ugly little head hiding an evil little brain, plus Alfonso made that shrill get-on-your-nerves noise which was a selfishness, plus the stupid thing pooped all over the house whenever George sneaked it out of the cage which was, by the way, illegal. And they were the two main troubles with birds, their twittering and their pooping. Why, only two summers ago it was stupid pigeons that caused all that blockage in the Jefferson chimneys, their stupid nesting and pooping leading to backed-up smoke. Poor Nancy had been bronchial for weeks –
In winter, read Annie, when food is scarce, the goshawk will move to a lower elevation.
This is My Song Page 7