Cardinal Divide

by Nina Newington

  There’s a crash. Geoffrey’s dropped his tray. His face is dark red. He’s glaring at the girls. “You shut up. Just shut the fuck up. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” Spit sprays from his mouth. His pristine hi-tops are spattered with tomato sauce. He stands, surrounded by broken china, lasagna, an apple. “You’re nothing but ignorant little bigots.”

  Cutlery clatters underfoot as he stalks away. The girls are gaping, then one of them snickers.

  The most obviously pregnant one says, “What’s his problem?”

  “All I said was something was gay.”

  “We weren’t talking about him.”

  “He shouldn’t have been eavesdropping.”

  Shannon turns to me. “He shouldn’t talk to us like that. And he didn’t even clean up.”

  “Everyone has a right to be here,” I say.

  “It’s just a word. It doesn’t mean anything.” She opens her eyes wide.

  “If it makes someone uncomfortable, maybe you should find a different word.”

  “Or maybe they should get over it.”

  The clients stalled out in line behind us are crowding closer.

  “He’s so sensitive.” A man’s voice.

  “Okay. We’ll deal with this later. I need a couple of volunteers to clean up.”

  “He should clean up his own mess,” says most-pregnant.

  Wendy comes forward and starts picking up broken china.

  “Why are we in trouble? Why isn’t he in trouble?” Shannon asks.

  I gather the apple and cutlery. “James, would you get the mop please?” He glances over his shoulder at Warren who’s scowling into middle distance, then does as I ask.

  “He used the f-word. That’s worse.”

  I guess it’s good that they sound like regular teenagers, given the crap lives they’ve lived, but it doesn’t make them less annoying.

  Jay appears in the cafeteria doorway, scanning the room. She comes over, sidestepping the freshly mopped area. “Wondered what was taking so long.”

  Shannon opens her mouth.

  I say, “I’ll tell you in the office. Thank you, James. Let’s get on with getting supper now.”

  “Good for Geoffrey,” Jay says.

  “Someone should talk with him,” Tanya says. “Pity Doug’s not on.”

  “Who’s his room-mate?”

  “Gordon, the Inuit guy.”

  “With a braid? Barely said a word?”

  “Homesick,” Tanya says. “They always are. Two thousand miles from home. Cathy thinks they’ll be a good match.”

  “Doug’ll talk to him tomorrow. She’s given him a lot of shifts, eh?”

  “You worked with him yet?”

  Tanya shakes her head. “She doesn’t schedule us together. Thinks she’s being sensitive. I told her we were fine. Doug did too.”

  I’m not on again until Sunday. That means Jay, Heather and Doug are doing three nights in a row together. Am I being squeezed out? Is Tanya?

  “You hang out?” Jay asks Tanya.

  “He takes the girls every other weekend. They love it at his place. Long as they can get into the city too. He’s good about driving them around. It’s not so hard anymore, now they’re old enough to be in the house by themselves when I’m working, but it’s good to get a break.”

  “You still seeing that guy?”

  “Joe? Nah. Mum’s not doing well. She’s lost a ton of weight. No energy.”

  “She been to the doctor?” Jay forks in the last mouthful.

  Tanya shakes her head. “Stubborn,” she says. “Jesus. I made an appointment for her anyway. Three weeks from now. They’ll call if anything opens up sooner.” She glances at the clock. “Who wants to do the welcome?”

  I shrug. “I’ll stay on desk, do up an incident report.”

  The list of new clients is under the log book. Laboucan, Danielle N/S. Non-status. Mother Native, father not. Probably. Laboucan? Hardly an Austrian name. She’s not the first Laboucan who’s been through here in my time.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “WE SAILED FROM Liverpool on the Empress of India on the 13th of April 1921. Arrived in Saint John five days later. We boarded the train almost immediately. I could hardly believe it. I was in Canada. I was looking out of the train windows for wolves before we’d reached the outskirts of town. Read too much Jack London. In point of fact the train was desperately overheated. To suit the Americans, we were told. I rode between the cars half the time, feeling the land pass under my feet, the sway of it, the big of it, my chest filling and filling. Forests so vast, rivers wild beyond my dreams. Then we left the hills behind. The first little station we stopped at in the prairies, I stood out on the platform, threw my head back and looked at such a sky as never spread itself over sooty old England, over blood-drenched France. I soared into that sky, higher and higher. Dorothy had to tug my sleeve. I’d have stayed there on that platform while the train pulled away. I shook my head, looked at her. She’d a long face, those clear grey eyes, dark hair pinned up in a bun. I could have kissed her for choosing me.

  “‘Did you know?’ I asked her. ‘Did you have any idea?’

  “She shook her head, smiling. ‘Come on.’

  “We got back on the train just in time.”

  Dad pauses, gazing out of the window.

  “What was she like, Dorothy?”

  He considers a moment. “She’d a clear voice, not deep, not high, but she could quiet a roomful of rowdy children with scarcely more than a whisper. She was truly a devout woman. The war only deepened her faith. After her father died she went to live with her married sister over near Bristol. I suspect it was mostly the two of them who raised the money to have the motor caravan built. The Women’s Auxiliary stocked it with pamphlets and hymnals and posters. We brought those with us on the ship, sent them on ahead once we got to Saint John. They were there when we got off the train in Saskatoon and so was the Bishop’s secretary. The van however, was not.

  “We stayed with the Bishop and his wife for three weeks. Dorothy taught some Sunday School classes. I went to the garage most days, watched what they were doing. Asked questions whenever they took a break. Poor men. At first they couldn’t believe a woman was interested but they got used to me. We spent quite a bit of time considering our route, Dorothy and I. Not that we had maps of any worth. The plan was to cover southern Saskatchewan and Alberta that summer, reaching as far north as the season permitted, then to finish up the next summer. Dorothy was determined that we would drive down every half-way passable track in the district. And keep notes. In order, she said, that the women who came in following years should not need to take unnecessary risks.

  “We went up some hellish roads, I’ll tell you that. The further west we got, the worse the driving. And the worse the driving, the happier she was. There was nothing she liked so well as to break a spring on a mountain road with a storm threatening. One time, I was under the van, Dorothy passing me tools, when we found ourselves surrounded by sheep. A settler was walking them to market. We assured him we didn’t need help. The next words out of his mouth were, ‘Are you girls married? I have two bachelor sons.’”

  Dad glances at the clock. “How about some lunch? There’s more of that soup. And the bread you brought.”

  “It’s good,” he says, chewing thoughtfully.

  My father, the gourmand.

  “What’s different?”

  “I gave it a longer rise.” I take another bite. “The texture’s better and there’s more flavour but does it taste a little rancid to you?”

  “Mm. A bit.”

  “I think it’s the whole wheat.”

  “That’s why they take the germ out of it.”

  “I need to get fresher flour.”

  “You should talk to Victor.” Dad’s gazing out of the window. The sun is shining and it’s not windy for once. “Manfred’s made a new bench. Shall we try it out?”

  It’s set on the bluff above the river but in a sli
ght dip. A slatted seat and back rest; the curving arms made of driftwood, river worn, bleached as bone. Wild roses grow around it, the hips mostly black now. Dad sits down with a sigh and pats the wood next to him. We sit, side by side, the usual careful foot between us, gazing at the mountains.

  “I miss them,” I say eventually. “I miss them in the city. I don’t think I could ever live very far from them.”

  Dad nods. After a moment he says, “I cried the first time I saw them. I’d seen pictures in the papers the government put out. Promoting the West. But they looked so improbable. You didn’t know what to believe. Not much, as I found out later. They were opening up the Peace Country then. Land of milk and honey. Never a mention of mosquitoes. Barely a word about the cold. I read whatever I could lay my hands on, the months before we sailed. The one thing they couldn’t exaggerate was the mountains. But I didn’t know that, driving day after day across the prairies. Then one day we came over a rise and there they were, on the horizon, shimmering, white against a dark blue sky. I pulled over, tears pouring down my face. Dorothy didn’t say anything but her eyes were wide too.”

  After a while I say, “I’m trying to imagine it. The adventure. Coming to a new world. The country you’re describing seems so brave, so ... so innocent.”

  “Innocent,” Dad says, as if he’s holding the word in his hand, turning it this way and that. “No, I don’t think it was innocent.”

  “By comparison,” I say. He’s never seen the inside of a place like Dreamcatcher, never dragged himself through the gutters of somewhere like the Downtown Eastside. Or even 118th Avenue. “I mean, you and Dorothy discovering the West, seeing the Rockies for the first time.”

  “Innocent we were not.” Dad says. “Not after the war.” His mouth relaxes. “We were naive about some things. I was, anyway. I’ll give you that. But how is your job? Tell me about it.”

  “I’m getting better at it. It’s ... It gives me a different window, you know. My old job, everything was under the surface. Dreamcatcher is the opposite. The client’s lives. A lot of them, anyway. Everything that’s awful and crazy, it’s right there. Drugs and violence and sex. But there’s a life force running through the place. I don’t mean to romanticize it. The chaos they grew up with. Makes me grateful for what you and Mum gave me but ...”

  I stall out. “Maybe there isn’t a ‘but’ there. I’m just grateful for the calm and order.”

  “But it’s not the whole story,” Dad says softly.

  “No. Wherever I came from.” I can’t finish the sentence.

  I stand, walk over to the edge of the bluff, peer down. Ice reaches across the shallows but where the water runs deep, undercutting the bank, it’s dark and lithe as a mink. The second summer after I came here, Mum and Dad and I stood on the shoulder of the road at Saskatchewan River Crossing. Dad pointed up at the jagged peaks. ‘See that snowy basin?’ He waited for my eyes to find the right stretch of snow, the turquoise shadow of ice at its edge, ‘That’s the Saskatchewan glacier. That’s where this river rises.’ I pictured it bursting out of the ground like a sleek blue bird.

  Where we were standing the water fanned wide and shallow over gravel. It rippled and frisked and it had the colour of his eyes in it. He was gazing up at the ice-fields. Mum was smiling, watching him. I thought, anybody driving by would think we were a family on a summer holiday, me and my parents. It could be true. I thought, it is true. But at the same moment something was caving in inside my chest. I kicked at the stones by the water. I kicked hard, over and over. Mum told me not to scuff my shoes. Dad said, ‘Take them off and I’ll wade in the water with you.’ I shook my head. I wouldn’t look at him. He crouched down next to me, picked through the pebbles until he found one flat enough to skip across the water. He handed it to me, looked for one for himself.

  ‘Ben, Meg, turn around.’

  I turned, heard a click, freaked.

  The one and only photograph they ever took of me.

  Did you ever regret it? That’s what I want to ask. Did you ever regret taking in such a weird, damaged kid? But there’s no point. I know what he’d say. No, they never regretted it. Not for a minute.

  Dad’s standing next to me now, leaning on his cane, looking down at the river below.

  “The thing about Dreamcatcher,” I say, knowing it’s true as the words are out of my mouth, “is that I don’t feel weird there. Because half of everybody there comes from some kind of nightmare. The stories are so over the top”—I shrug—“whatever I imagine, somebody’s been through something worse.”

  “I wish I could help you find out. Not knowing”—he shrugs—“it’s harder than knowing. Even if what you found out was horrible.”

  All I can do is nod.

  “You’re staying the night?”

  “If you’ll tell me more of the story.”

  “Then I might stretch out, take a proper snooze.”

  “Sounds like a good idea. I didn’t get much sleep.”

  His eyebrows ask the question.

  “Sometimes getting home at half-past midnight, it’s hard to switch off.”

  I must have fallen asleep as soon as I lay down. I wake to a knocking on the front door. Think for a moment I’m in the city. Then I hear Dad’s voice and one of the brothers. Victor, I expect. “Enjoy,” he says, and the door closes behind him.

  He’s cooked dinner for me too. When we’ve put paid to two perfect pork chops, baked potatoes, Brussels sprouts and sauerkraut, Dad asks, “Where were we?”

  “Under a van, somewhere in Western Canada. A passing shepherd was inquiring whether you were married.”

  “In spite of the fact that we were covered in mud from head to toe. He told us how happy his wife would be to see us and went on his way. He was right. They so rarely had a chance to talk to other women, the wives. They’d talk and talk. We’d sign the children up for the Sunday School by post, give them each a picture and a leaflet. The choice was: Faith, Duty or Prayer.” He glances at me, catching the smile.

  “On Sundays, wherever we were, Dorothy would teach Sunday School. She’d bring out Nelson’s Bible pictures—great big pictures meant to be hung on a wall—and use them to tell the stories. The favourite was always the story of the Good Samaritan. The children could scarcely believe anyone would be so evil as to walk by a person in trouble. That was one thing you never did, pass by a person in need of help. Not out on the ranches and farms.

  “Those were hard times. 1921 was the sixth straight year of drought for southern Alberta. We drove up once to a place, log house, sod roof, door not quite shut. Sheep nothing but skin and bones around a dried up watering hole. No dog barked. There was always a dog. No-one came to the door. We climbed down, walked over to the door, calling ‘hello’. I knocked on the door. It swung open. There was a buzzing I’ll never forget and then the stink. Something lay on the floor under a shining heaving mass of flies. I felt Dorothy stiffen behind me. ‘Dog,’ I said. I’d seen the tail. Black, a white tip.

  “‘Sir,’ she said. My head snapped up. In the far corner a man sat. I could hear his breathing now, past the buzzing. Hoarse, uneven breaths. His eyes turned to us. I’d seen that look in France. On the cot between the man and the wall I could make out the barrel of a shotgun.

  “‘Sir.’ Dorothy started to walk toward him, slow and smooth. I never saw that woman scared.

  “He didn’t move at all. She sat down on the bed a foot away. Never even looked at the gun. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  “His mouth moved. Took him a while to work up to words. It had been a few days since he’d shaved. He must have been in his thirties. A dark haired, handsome man. Gaunt now, eyes red and swollen.

  “‘Strychnine. For the coyotes. I ...’

  “He started to sob. Such misery dragged out of his guts. Like pieces of himself tearing loose.

  “She let him cry. She had that knack. With the women too. She’d sit with all the time in the world. No need to mend or fix or hurry a feeling along. ‘That’
s for God,’ she said to me once. ‘That’s God’s work.’

  “He cried until he couldn’t cry any more. She said, ‘I’ll make some tea, shall I?’ When he nodded she said, ‘You’ll have to show me where things are’ and he got up and followed her to the stove. Showed her a pail of water, box of kindling. While the kettle boiled he showed her flour and lard and sugar. I made biscuits while they sat together and drank tea, the flies buzzing all the while over the stinking corpse.

  “‘Have you been in the country long?’ She started him talking. It was only when he had tea and food in him that she said, ‘Where shall we bury your dog?’

  “‘Moss,’ he said. ‘Moss was his name.’”

  I look at Dad.

  He nods. “I never forgot that man. I don’t know what happened to him. We camped there that night, prayed with him in the morning. Rains came not too long after. A blessing for the ranches but not for us. Roads turned to mud. Wet or dry, they were a terror, those roads. The way they made them, they’d scoop the dirt from either side of the track, throw it in the middle, flatten it out a bit. Clods would bake, hard as brick, in the sun. Until it rained. You’d have a single track with a three foot ditch on either side. That or a slough. Muskeg. A thousand ways you could get yourself stuck. When it rained enough we’d have to put on the chains. Dreadnought chains, they were called, heavy as hell. No way you could get them on without being completely covered in mud.

  “That was the thing about Dorothy. We’d be up to our axles in mud, night coming on, she’d stand there, cheek smeared, hair unpinned, and laugh. She’d a peal of a laugh. It would ring out over the country and you’d feel, ‘Well, life’s for the living and here I am.’ You couldn’t help but feel more alive.” His eyes sparkle.

  “Were you ...?”

  “Was I what?”

  I shift, the chair suddenly uncomfortable. “I don’t know. In love with her?”

  After a moment he says, “We were two good Christian women. Well, one and a half anyway. I can’t imagine such a thought ever crossed her mind. They were, in that respect, more innocent times.” He glances at me, seeing if I caught the concession.