Malcolm’s patience was something he reserved for nature. It was an emotional quality that was essential to his trapping. It was also required for fishing. Or maybe it wasn’t so much patience that Malcolm had acquired but, rather, a need to be away and in some safe and quiet spot. In the whispering silence of nature, he could feel secure and even at peace. Here there were no screams. Here there was no chaos or cacophony, no artificial thunder and the unrelenting flashes of piercing light. Here he was not caught between orders from above and the often pleading questions from below. No one to beg him to make it stop, or just make it all go away.
Malcolm had six little trout, all about eight or ten inches long, lined up in parade on the cool grass of the riverbank, before he realized the sun was only about one hour above the horizon of the foothills to the west. It was also the first time he thought about Jack, ordered to wait by the fire.
Malcolm thought back to the day when he’d tended to Jack’s arm. His son, broken by the forces of the river. Malcolm remembered seeing the long, slender, almost delicate look of that arm and the fingers extending beyond. So different from his own, and yet connected. A boy, a life, entrusted to his care. And now almost grown. He tried to remember if he had ever felt that way before about being a father. About being someone other than a provider. Maybe when Jack was a baby? Maybe when a new life seemed like a new beginning? A promise of hope?
Malcolm shook off those thoughts, as if they had never entered his consciousness. Cut them off in the same way he had always ignored or avoided them before. His task was in bringing back the fish for an evening meal. Doing something, anything, had always been the easy alternative and logical choice.
He gutted the small fish and left the heads on. They’d be a handle for cooking, and then something to hang onto while eating them.
“You can cook these while I get us some water for tea,” Malcolm instructed, and then strode off, back to the creek for water.
By the time Malcolm returned with the water, the trout were cooked. The spines were easily pulled out of the tender, flaky meat which, in turn, could be peeled away from the skin. Three trout apiece became an easy and satisfying meal when followed by some steaming tea.
As darkness settled, the glow of the fire became their light. And maybe, as it flickered in their faces, Jack felt bold enough to ask some real questions. Or maybe it was the realization that if Rose could teach them their book lessons, then maybe Malcolm could teach them about the life he knew. Despite being a reluctant father, he was still the man of the house.
“What do you dream about, Dad?” Jack decided to ask what was on his mind. “I’ve heard Cyril at times when he dreams. He sort of whimpers and kicks. He says that I do it, too, and we’ve talked about our dreams sometimes, when we remember them. But what do big people like you dream about? Like the other night when you were almost shouting. Was it about the river and the flood?”
Jack looked down after that. He wondered if he might have asked too much all at once.
Malcolm didn’t answer right away. He didn’t react at all. At least, not on the outside. But on the inside, he just wanted to shut out all the questions. Possibly because he didn’t think he knew the right words for the answers. Probably because he knew that nobody would understand. They hadn’t been there.
Jack waited, staring down into the fire. “Was it about being tied up and trapped under water?”
“I guess it was the war,” Malcolm said at last. “I remember the war.” He said it slowly, thinking each word as he said it. And, in doing so, seeing the thousands of images each word brought to mind. And, because of the intensity of that seething, searing time, each word really could have exploded into a thousand pictures.
“It was the biggest thing that ever happened to us, or to anyone,” Malcolm said. “And it was a lot different from what we had been told, or what we had told ourselves it would be.” He talked slowly, painfully, solemnly.
“We thought we were going to a glorious adventure,” Malcolm continued, staring vacantly into the fire and seeing it all again. “We thought we were getting away from this.” He paused. “We wanted to get away from what you yourself were just trying to get away from—the endless cycles of work, hard work, and having little or nothing to show for it.”
“It’s not that bad,” Jack said. Then he added, “I think I was just curious.”
“I guess that’s one way to describe it.” Malcolm checked the tea tin and poured himself some more. His mouth was dry from all the talking and thinking. Trying to remember the war, or to explain it, was like trying to put an animal back together once it had been taken in a trap. Just bits and pieces scattered, and a pelt that someone would make into something else.
“Was Billy from Whitecourt, too?”
Malcolm sighed. “No, just someone in my platoon.” Malcolm remembered the face and the features of the boy. One of the youngest. A replacement sent up to the front a week before. More pimples and fuzz than a beard. Someone who didn’t belong. Someone who probably just a few weeks or months before had decided to become part of the big adventure in Europe. Hoping that he’d be in time to fire off a few rounds before it was all over. He’d come because he’d heard the stories fed him by newspapers, and decided he wanted to have stories of his own to tell.
“What happened to Billy?”
“I got to him,” Malcolm remembered, seeing the details again. “But I couldn’t save him.”
“What happened?”
In the same way he couldn’t end a dream, Malcolm had to go on. He’d begun and he needed to continue. He needed to let the words flow so he could look at them again, to put the pieces of the puzzle together, so he could look at the whole. And maybe, hopefully, understand.
Jack put some sticks into the fire. A shower of sparks soared up into the darkness, trying to escape the heat below.
“He looked so real and natural as I came up to him,” Malcolm recalled. “It was as if he was relieved to see me, thinking it was going to be all right. That I’d heard his shouts and that I’d come to make things right.”
“Was he shot?”
Malcolm thought for a long time. Maybe wondering if Jack needed to hear. Maybe wondering if he should let those memories resurface. “It was what we’d learned to call a ‘Trouble Maker’—a mortar—that somehow screamed out of the sky and through all the smoke to find our position. It landed close enough to explode one of our Vickers machine gun positions.” He was staring into the fire now, remembering the details, remembering the big hollow silence after the shell exploded. Or maybe the silence was just the deafness created by the impact.
“We thought they were all gone. It was like a volcano had erupted under them. Billy must have been far enough away not to be blown completely apart at its impact, not to be buried by all the mud, dirt, and debris that got scattered in all directions.”
Malcolm squeezed his eyes shut as those bits and pieces of his puzzle came together again, like in his dreams. He wondered if he was talking to explain things to his son or to himself. He swallowed hard to force his emotions to settle.
“He didn’t scream,” Malcolm said. “He almost sounded calm. I thought I just had to dig him out and free him from all the dirt pinning him down. I told him to hang on, that he was all right, that I’d get him out of there.”
He wondered if Jack would understand. Would he know that it was like him fighting to free himself from the river? Jack had told him that despite his broken arm, he’d felt no pain, that it had all happened so fast. And yet every instant of it had been seared into his mind.
“I think I talked with him,” Malcolm continued. “Told him to hold still while I dug him out of there. The dirt was loose and granular, like a big shovel had just dropped it all on top of him.” Malcolm was starting to sound like he was cold, and shivering, despite the fire in front of him. “But Billy wasn’t talking with me. He was gray, staring up into w
hat was left of the sky.”
“He was dead, wasn’t he?” Jack asked.
Malcolm nodded. “Shrapnel from the shell and stuff from the trench had torn into him. I kept telling him to hang on, that I’d get him out of there, even though half of him had been torn away and buried even deeper in that mess.” Malcolm shook, and he gasped deeply. He’d not wanted to see the reality of his dreams. He’d wanted them to be buried, along with so many other things.
“It was Billy that you were calling to when you came for me in the river the other day.” Jack stared wide-eyed through the fire, blurred by tears, choking back his own memory and now the understanding of what his father was saying. “You came to rescue me like you came for Billy in the war.”
“No. I came for you.” Malcolm said it slowly, deliberately. “I did not want the river to win.”
“In the same way that I came for you?”
“You should have left me,” Malcolm said.
“What?”
“You should have left me!” Malcolm shouted. “You were free! You were up above the river! You had the canoe!” Then, painfully, “Why did you cut me loose?”
Jack stared in disbelief. Stared at his father, his dad. Then, realizing the enormity of the implication—“That would have made you free, too, wouldn’t it?” He didn’t need to ask it. He knew the answer.
“I don’t know,” Malcolm said, looking down. “I saw you, and I think I remembered myself. I remembered wanting to be free, to be away from everything that seemed to hold me down, when I thought that I was done growing up. I think I wanted that for you.”
“Like the eagles,” Jack said. “My eagles at the riverbank. They get so restless that they finally jump from their nest, hoping that their wings will catch them.”
Malcolm understood. And he remembered. But that was the freedom of youth and of long ago. “I think it’s different when you get older,” he said at last. “When you know what pain is—real pain, whatever the source of it—then freedom is being able to shut that out. Maybe freedom is in escaping from your memories.”
“But you didn’t make the canoe and the rope trap you, did you?” Jack asked.
“No, but I don’t think I minded it. I think I imagined that the river was making us all free.”
Neither of them had noticed that the fire had gone down. The fire no longer mattered.
“I saw you,” Jack said at last. “I saw you, like you saw Billy. If I’d run up the hill and away, I wouldn’t have been free. I’d be carrying a war with me in my mind, every day and every night.”
Malcolm emptied what was left of the tea. It was the signal that the evening was over. A full moon had risen to turn the darkness of night and the things around them into silvery shadows, highlights, and darker shadows.
“I’ll get us some water for morning,” Malcolm said, looking at the illuminating moon.
“And I’ll get us some firewood before we turn in,” Jack added.
He hadn’t volunteered. He hadn’t been told. He was just doing what was necessary and what was expected. And it felt good. He wondered if that was what the eagles felt when they first realized their wings were working and holding them up.
26
A full moon on a clear night, and the colder temperatures associated with that, explained why both Jack and Malcolm were shivering and up early. Or maybe it was the anticipation of the day ahead.
“Last one,” Malcolm said, holding up a little tin of the Eagle Brand sweetened milk. “We may as well use it in our tea to give us a good send-off.”
“You mean to get us ready for the cold and the wet of going up the voyageur channel today,” Jack said.
“It’ll lighten the load in the canoe.”
The canoe looked pretty small and insignificant, marooned up there on the hill above the river. Jack wondered how he’d be able to do anything to help move it with only one good arm.
“We’ll take the gear down first and then come back for the canoe,” Malcolm suggested. “Going up and down the trail will get us used to it and warm us up.”
After they’d put out the fire, Jack picked up what he could and started down to the river. He was anxious to see what might be in store for them. On the steep slope, the poplar saplings were like a crude handrail, or a succession of crutches to steady him.
The Athabasca was back to its normal summer flow. Only the extra tangles of debris and the dusty appearance of the trees that had been covered by the flood indicated the power and size of the events of a few days before. Jack almost felt disappointed that there would be no extraordinary challenge. He had not left boyhood behind entirely.
When they went back for the canoe and one final look around, Malcolm said, “Let’s go home.”
He didn’t see Jack smiling at what he’d said. He’d never called their place on the Athabasca “home” before.
Malcolm hoisted the canoe and shouldered it for the trip back down. He explained that he didn’t want to take a chance on the two of them doing it, that it was light enough and that he was used to portaging it. “You rake through the fire with the butt of the ax one more time and bring that.”
Jack accepted the task. It was part of the routine, too. It was summer. Things were drying out. And the ax was always carried separately for safety. But, deep down, Jack wondered if maybe it was his dad laying claim to his canoe again.
Jack held the canoe in the river and steadied it while his dad loaded the gear and lashed it in, keeping the weight well to the stern. Jack began to understand why when he was ordered into the stern position.
“You do what you can back there and help with the steering,” was all Malcolm said.
Jack nodded and understood. It was like his first run up to Hinton with his dad and the furs. His dad had been stronger and knew how to pick his way through the channels and currents in the tough spots. It was also the voyageur way, as Jack learned from Harley. It used to be the man with the experience, the maître, who was at the front, directing and choosing the way, using draws and sweeps with his paddle to pull the canoe where he wanted it to go.
Jack helped by tucking his paddle under his arm and keeping the little canoe in line with his dad’s meandering course, in the easiest possible route back up to the first set of rapids—the Gooseneck—and the voyageur channel around them.
They ferried across the current to the bottom of the island. “We’re going to look first, right?” Jack shouted as they shot through some strong eddies. He looked over at the power of the rapids in the main channel of the Gooseneck.
“Yeah. It’s as important for choosing your way upstream as it is for coming down,” Malcolm acknowledged. He was out of the canoe with the bowline before it ground into the shore.
The island was a mess. Because of its rocky base, it was not only the cause of the rapids around it, but also the immovable obstruction that had snagged a lot of trees and driftwood during the flood. Another good reason for looking and choosing their path up the smaller channel.
“Watch your step,” Malcolm warned as they set out.
“Maybe you should tie my laces,” Jack suggested. Up to this point, he’d simply stepped into his shoe-packs and it had worked out all right. But on some silt-covered rocks on the island, especially if he had to wade out into the current, loose footgear might be a hazard or get sucked off entirely. They might be old and worn, but they were essential for lining the canoe through some current by a long tow rope from shore, or tracking the canoe by wading it through some current or over a shallow gravel bar.
As they scouted the channel, Jack noticed where he’d been dumped by overhanging trees almost a week earlier. He decided not to mention the spot to his dad. But, in looking at it again, Jack could see where, how, and maybe why he’d made his mistake.
At the upper end of the island, they discovered a new problem. A jumble of trees and other driftwood was pi
led there, in effect, raising the level of the water and increasing the strength of the current. Not a problem for going down, but now not the kind of current that Malcolm would be able to paddle them up on his own.
“We’ll cross when we get to here,” Malcolm said, pointing with his paddle. “You’ll have to line the canoe from up on that bank while I keep it out in the current.”
Jack nodded. The riverbank was relatively clear. The only obstacle was an outcropping of rock that he’d have to climb up and over while pulling on the tow line.
When they finally got to that point with the canoe, the rock seemed to be a lot bigger and steeper. An obvious reason to avoid portaging if possible.
“The canoe’s light,” Malcolm shouted. “It should bounce up out of that backwater and into the ‘V’ of the current without too much trouble!” He nodded for Jack to climb up onto the rock. “Just let me swing the canoe out into the current, and then pull me to up above this rock!”
“What if the current’s too strong?” Jack shouted back.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it! Maybe there’s something up there to snub the rope around if you need to!”
Jack understood how it should work. It was a simple matter of angles and balance. That, and enough energy and rope to lift the canoe up and over the sluice of water churning its way downstream. It also required a clear path to do all that, both on land and on the river.
Malcolm swung out into the current. Jack anchored him from his position on the tip of the rock, and played out enough rope to let the canoe veer into the darker, faster water flowing in a “V” against it.
“Pull!”
Jack moved ahead, straining on the full length of rope. He was moving successfully.
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