The Forest Lover

by Susan Vreeland

  “Let them talk. They’ll never be artists—not like you.” Admiration glistened in Jessica’s eyes.

  “They pay more attention to the way they hold their teacups than the way they hold their brushes,” Emily said.

  “What? Don’t tell me you think they’re serious about art.”

  “Humph. Priscilla and her phony Knightsbridge accent posturing with that flamingo on her head. Now if she’d worn a hat with ferns or crow feathers, at least that would show she knew where she was.” She was pleased when Jessica laughed.

  They left muddy Cordova Street at Water Street, and walked quickly past saloons, tobacco shops, peep show wagons, bawdy houses, and Indian prostitutes, to get to Burrard Inlet. At the Union Steamship dock, they bought clam soup from an old Chinese woman tending a brazier. Under a paper parasol her grateful smile showed brown teeth. Fish smells from the packing houses mixed with the aroma of wet wood shavings from Hastings Sawmill shrilly chewing up a grove of cedars, spitting them out in planks. She grunted. Progress, Father would say. Colonialism, she’d say. While Victoria strove to be more English than London, Vancouver was busy being the Liverpool of the Pacific.

  A log boom made herringbone patterns on the water, the same pattern as on the tooled platform in the hut. Was that what Lulu had meant by everything is one?

  “Now that log boom is a possibility, with that three-master in the mid-ground, forest and mountains in the distance.”

  “Mm, too industrial for their tastes,” Jessica said.

  “But that’s what buys their trips to the Ascot races.”

  At the Canadian Pacific Railway dock, an Empress liner rode high in the water. Emily stopped.

  “Whooh, wouldn’t you give a tooth to go north in a ship like that? My father did. I begged him to take me. He said that was inviting trouble. He left England for adventure, but denied it to his family.”

  “Why don’t you go now?”

  Emily uttered a coarse, quick laugh. “There’s always that pesky living to be made.”

  “Then why not go west to that Indian village again?”

  “Hitats’uu? Too hard to get to. It’s on the west coast of Vancouver Island. That means either a six-hour or an overnight ferry to Victoria, an obligatory visit to my sisters there, another day and a half on a steamer up the island’s west coast, and that only runs once a week, in fair weather.”

  “That didn’t stop you before. What’s the real reason?”

  “The inevitable argument with my skin-and-blisters.”

  “Huh?”

  “With my sisters. About disgracing the family by ‘socializing with primitives.’ ” She snickered. “That made me want to go there all the more.”

  “That’s a dumb reason. You ought to go because you love it.”

  “How do you know I love it?”

  “Because of your drawings, silly. And your face when you looked at them.”

  “Love can take many forms. Even self-denial. Hitats’uu is terribly isolated. I waltzed in not even thinking about what effect I might have. The girl, Lulu, was inordinately curious about Victoria. I don’t want to speed up change.”

  “One person? Aren’t you overestimating?”

  Emily shrugged, letting her gaze roam over the ship. “Look at the line of that prow. All swooped up in a luscious white arc.”

  “You see everything in terms of line and color, don’t you? It’s an obsession, looking at everything and everyone as possible paintings. Isn’t life bigger than that?”

  “It is big. Take those grain sacks and Chinese fishermen wearing those coolie hats. Strong repeated shapes. Good accents.”

  “But they’re not people to you. They’re shapes in a scene.”

  “What I painted at Hitats’uu was more than shapes.”

  She gazed across Burrard Inlet to North Vancouver and the Squamish Reserve hugging the shore—so close to Vancouver that the whole city would have an influence, not just one lone visitor. Maybe the Squamish living there had coffin trees too. Maybe it was a place that could feed her back again, as Lulu had said.

  At the east end of the wharf they took a path past waterfront shacks. Down a grassy incline lay a narrow muskeg filled with skunk cabbage, moss, and lady fern. Beyond that, partly hidden by trees, a cove sheltered a tent and campsite, a beached skiff and a larger boat at anchor—funny-looking, stubby, with a tall, faded red pilot’s cabin much too large in proportion to the hull, a sleepy animal’s eye painted near the prow, and a crazy crooked stovepipe topped by a tin coolie hat. And on the cabin roof, a small French flag.

  “Now that’s a boat with spunk.”

  Jessica cocked her head. “What about him?”

  A short, broad-shouldered, bearded man wearing a slouch hat stepped out from the shadow of trees, crossed a rivulet, and dropped a load of branches by the fire pit.

  “Fits the scene, doesn’t he?” Emily picked some lady fern.

  They walked part way down the incline and the man looked up.

  Jessica nudged her. “Say something.”

  “Do you own that boat?” Emily called out and fanned the fern toward it.

  “Non, mademoiselle. She owns me.”

  “We like it,” Jessica chimed in.

  He guffawed. “Suit yourself.”

  Emily murmured to Jessica, “Those driftwood drying racks would make interesting shadows if it were sunny.” The camp looked fairly permanent. “How long will you be camping here?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what? The weather?”

  “Depends on when I sell all my furs.” He moved a bundle of pelts from the skiff to the tent.

  “We want to draw this.” Jessica held both arms out.

  The man gesticulated broadly, exaggerating her movement. “This isn’t going anywhere.”

  “But with your boats and camp and everything.”

  He laid an otter pelt on his arm and moved the animal’s little head as if it were speaking. “Moi aussi, s’il vous plaît,” he said in a squeaky voice and wagged his head.

  Emily and Jessica turned to each other, dumbfounded, and laughed at his peculiarity. “They’d like this,” Jessica said.

  “You mean him,” Emily whispered. “In two weeks,” she said louder, “many ladies will come.”

  His hands flew up. “Ah, but none as beautiful as you, mesdemoiselles.”

  • • •

  She swung open the door to her rented flat on Granville Street. Joseph’s gray feathers and red tail ruffled in the breeze. “I’m no English crow,” he said, as well as he could.

  “Right you are. I like your sense of identity.” She shook out rain from her cape, put the ferns in water.

  “Don’t talk rot,” he muttered.

  She put her finger in his cage, and he let her stroke his breast. “You know how touching live things makes me crazy happy, don’t you, Joseph? How lonesome I get.”

  He belted out a long, old-fashioned “Awk!”

  Had someone knocked? She opened the door. A lean native woman, mid-twenties perhaps, stood on the stoop, her square shoulders wrapped in a shawl. She held a large lumpy something in a cloth which she carried by the four corners.

  “Baskets? You want a basket?”

  Half hidden behind the woman’s full brown skirt stood a girl and a boy, maybe four and five years old, each carrying a smaller bulging flour sack. Rain fell like it meant it now and the girl wiped her cheek. None of them wore shoes.

  “I’m sorry. I have no money for baskets.”

  “No money? Maybe you got dress, shirt for a basket.”

  The boy sneezed and buried his nose in his mother’s skirt.

  “Come in.”

  The mother hesitated, then wiped the children’s feet, touched her hand to the girl’s back, and waited for the boy to follow his sister in. The woman wiped her own feet, stepped in, two steps, toes placed down first, and knelt, straight-backed, to lay the bundle on the floor. The part between her braids cut an unwavering line. From another bundle
cradled in the shawl on her back, a small wet face peeked out.

  Emily took out a handkerchief, held her hand toward the baby, and looked at the woman. “May I?”

  The woman froze, surprise written on her face, and then nodded.

  Emily wrapped her index finger and dabbed at the sweet brown cheeks wrinkled as a walnut and the nose hardly a rise at all. Bow-shaped lips pulled inward at the touch. It was a moment of exquisite pleasure, passing too quickly.

  The woman spread the cloth to display the baskets. Round ones, squares, rectangles, flat trays, all coiled, with intricate diagonal and geometric patterns or with animal and fern shapes.

  “These are fine baskets.”

  The woman emptied out the children’s sacks and smaller baskets tumbled out. One rolled against a table leg and the boy jumped to retrieve it.

  “What are they made of?”

  “Cedar root.”

  “What about this?” She pointed to a contrasting pattern.

  “Cherry bark.”

  “These black ones too? That zigzag?”

  “No. That one different. The bark of horsetail root. It means lightning and rainstorm. Use for holding water.”

  “Ah.” The woman had made a connection between purpose and the source of her design. “And this?” Emily touched one with a cherry bark line undulating around the belly.

  The woman laughed in a soft, abashed way. “Snake.” She moved her hand to imitate a snake wriggling forward.

  The design was its track in the dirt. A keen imagination. She looked at the woman’s face—round nostrils, sharply edged mouth neither turned up nor turned down, dark eyes tucked under delicate eyebrows, and smooth, cedar-colored skin. A little older than Lulu.

  Emily held up a basket with short vertical stripes crossing a long horizontal center line. At one end a half dozen slanted lines sat on top of the horizontal. “Salmon?”

  The woman nodded, pleased. “Bones of salmon. These not the old ways. They my own.”

  “You’re an artist.”

  The young woman shook her head. “I just make baskets.”

  The largest oval one had a lid. Emily picked it up. The inside was as smooth as the outside. The design seemed to represent open wings. “It’s a handsome one. How much?”

  The woman’s eyes widened. “One dollar. It’s Eagle.”

  “One dollar isn’t enough for a basket this fine.” A smile skipped over the woman’s face and she rocked back on her heels. Emily set it down. “I can’t buy it today, but it’s beautiful.”

  “Old clothes are good enough.”

  “I don’t have any here, but when I go home to Victoria, I’ll bring some back. Maybe you will have one basket left.”

  She noticed another which had a rectangle outlined in black with a narrow peaked roof, a door, and two windows. “What’s this?”

  “The Squamish Mission in North Vancouver. That’s my church. I live at the Reserve.”

  “How will I know whether you have one basket left?”

  “Come and ask. I’m Basketmaker Sophie.”

  “I’m Emily Carr.”

  The parrot squawked, surprising the children. “His name is Joseph. Talk to him and he’ll talk back.”

  They inched toward him as if he’d fly away, cage and all, and the boy said, “Hello, bird. Hello.”

  “Hello bird,” Joseph said. “Don’t talk rot.”

  They gasped and backed away, turning to their mother in wonder. In a few moments, they crept back to the bird.

  Emily watched Sophie take in the paintings, the plaster casts, the paint supplies and brushes. “An artist.”

  “Anartist. Awk! Em’ly zanartist.”

  “My sisters explain me that way to their friends and he learned it from them.”

  “He makes strong talk. Like Eagle for Squamish people.” Amusement played around the woman’s mouth. “Only more loud.”

  Emily chuckled. “I guess I’d better listen.”

  Sophie was more at ease with her than Lulu had been, maybe the result of living close to a city. She seemed to have a contentedness in her own person that Lulu didn’t have.

  “Would you like some tea? May I give them bread and jam?”

  Sophie hesitated. Her full lips parted.

  “Why don’t you stay awhile to wait out the rain?”

  “Rain no matter,” she said, glancing at her daughter whose big eyes pleaded. “All right. Only for the children.” She turned to Emily. “You have children?”

  “No. I’m not married. I can’t be a wife and a painter.”

  “No? I’m a wife. I’m a basket maker.”

  “Lots of things here,” the boy said with wonder in his voice, saving her from having to answer.

  “Hard to throw things away. Clutter and putter, that’s me.”

  Emily spread the bread with a thick layer of grape jelly. The boy ate quickly, his cheeks soon streaked purple, but the girl savored hers.

  Sophie inspected each painting. “You like trees.” She giggled. “But you don’t know forests. Forests are dark. More dark. More . . .” She wrinkled her nose and shrugged.

  Her bluntness stung. Emily looked at her Hitats’uu watercolors. More what? How dark should she get them?

  Sophie’s eyes ignited in front of the drawing of Lulu at the hut. “Squamish women do that long, long time ago. No more. It makes church priest mad, so no more.”

  “But this is at Hitats’uu.”

  “You went to Westcoast village?”

  “That’s my Westcoast friend, Lulu.”

  Sophie scowled. “Lulu is not a Christian.”

  “She’s a good person.”

  “She is not a Christian.”

  Sophie knelt to wrap her baskets. The large one with the eagle she left sitting on the floor.

  “What about this?” Emily said, picking it up for her.

  Sophie stood up, rigid, and shook her head. “By and by, you come to Squamish Mission Reserve and paint a Christian village. We have a church. You remember me, Sophie Frank. Jimmy Frank’s my husband. I call him Frank. He works longshore. We live right by the water. You ask for Basketmaker Sophie.”

  Emily smiled. “By and by, you come here too. Come soon.”

  4: Douglas-fir

  “Good of you to come for Father’s birthday,” her sister Lizzie said.

  “His birthday? Today? Imagine that,” Emily said, piling on the innocence in a voice higher than her usual deep tone. “I came for the old clothes.” She moved a blouse from the questionable pile onto the discard pile on the chesterfield.

  “Don’t tease us.” Lizzie dropped her old pink Easter dress onto the pile, her long, thin fingers extended a moment in midair.

  “I’m not going with you, if that’s what you have in mind.”

  “Honor thy father and thy mother, Millie.”

  “There’s no heavenly grace earned by visiting graves, Lizzie. Now if their bodies were folded up and put in boxes in trees like the Nootka do so they could feel a breeze or two, I might go.” She chuckled, and held up a worn, flared skirt. Its forest green appealed to her.

  “Every Carr daughter goes on his birthday. Mother’s too,” Alice said. “Why won’t you?”

  “Seeing his grave would only whip up my anger over some things he said to me.”

  Rebels like you are burned or hanged in public squares, was one thing he’d said. The house still echoed his words.

  “You used to go with us. You used to like going with us,” Lizzie said.

  “No. You wanted to think I liked going.” She hated all that sham homage she’d performed since she was seventeen, the year he died.

  Dede came into the parlor, and Emily glanced at her to see if she’d heard. Uniform creases in formal balance, like parentheses around her mouth, stood guard against any random and unreasoned smile that might escape her.

  “You’ll go with us now or—”

  “Or you’ll send me to bed without any supper? Please, Dede. Is playing parent the only role
you know? I’m thirty-three, if you haven’t noticed, and I’m bored with it.”

  It was their great gap in age that made Dede capable of breathing in loudly through her nose for an interminably long time before exhaling, as she did now, her sign of exasperation.

  Dede folded carefully her old blue serge skirt and matching jacket, and set them on the pile. “Are these for a church or an orphanage bazaar?”

  “Neither. They’re for a Squamish woman at the North Vancouver Reserve.”

  “A siwash?”

  Emily prickled at the ugly term.

  “You’re wicked not to tell us that straight out.” Dede looked at her suit as if she wanted to snatch it off the pile.

  “She came to my flat selling baskets. I’m going to take her the clothes next weekend.”

  “She can get clothes from her mission,” Lizzie said, tucking a loose strand into her brown bun. “You don’t have to take them to her yourself. It’s too personal.”

  “I’m not going for charity. I’m going for friendship.”

  “Honestly, when will you get it in your head that we can’t condone this unwholesome socializing with primitives? It’s a disgrace to the family.” Dede’s breath was loud and long. “If Father were alive, he wouldn’t approve.”

  “No, he wouldn’t—he who sold sacks of raisins crawling with maggots to Songhees lined up at his warehouse.”

  “Millie! How can you make such a hateful claim? He most certainly did not,” Dede screeched.

  “I saw it. He even told me, ‘Indians don’t mind maggots.’ ”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Convenient for you to think so.” She flung her arms to shoo her out. “You’ll be late for your appointment with his bones.”

  • • •

  The buggy wheels crunched on the gravel, an irritating sound. Even the parlor irked her. Father’s raspy voice lay like a residue on his black, imitation-marble, English-style mantel, clung to his fox-and-hounds wallpaper, rested on his English primroses and cowslips peeking through the bay windows. His photograph leered at her from above his horsehair side chair. She hadn’t realized until she moved across the strait to Vancouver how much these reminders of him chafed her like sandpaper.

  She picked up the dark green skirt, and took the stairs two at a time to the bedroom she shared with Alice when she was home, to get the sewing basket. She cut through the hem and made a slit up the front of the skirt, made another cut straight up the back. She stitched the front raw edges to the backs to make a split-legged skirt. Now this was what she needed to ride a horse the way it ought to be ridden. She put it on, tucked a small sketch pad into her pocket, and went out to the barn to look for her old riding reins.