“Where did she call from?”
“The bar in Rocky Mountain House let her use their phone. I’d given her my number.”
“Had she called you before?”
“No.”
“Would you have expected her to let you know if she was going to be out of town?”
Dad’s brow furrows. “No. No, I wouldn’t.”
“You told me about the first time you met her, taking hides to the cabin. What happened next?”
“About a month later she dropped me a line saying the hides were ready. I was to meet her at the bar. I thought we’d go back to the cabin again. Or at least I hoped we would. I’d tasted what it was like to talk to another human being without reservation. It left me hungry for more.
“But this time she was all business. We went out behind the bar. She had an ancient car tucked into the trees at the edge of the lot. My hides were on the backseat along with a bedroll. They were beautiful, the hides. The best I’d ever seen but I couldn’t swallow my dismay as she pocketed the money and turned away. She turned back, looked me in the eye. ‘I got some family trouble of my own,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back.’
“I just nodded. Watched the car pull out of the lot. She turned left not right, headed for the mountains. I felt empty then.” He tries for a smile, doesn’t quite make it.
“Oh Dad.”
“There have been easier times in my life. But it had helped, the earlier talk. There’d be hours in a day when I wasn’t consumed by my ... my thoughts.”
I want to ask but there’s a rawness to his face that makes me reach for the teapot instead.
“I don’t know exactly what Moira meant by ‘family trouble,’ if that’s what you’re wondering. I didn’t see her again until the next spring. I got a note saying she was back. I was about to start lambing and besides, I didn’t have any hides to take her. Nothing to justify the petrol. I went anyway. Time was Polly would have noticed but by then she was just eager to have me out of the house so she could get on with drinking herself silly.”
“What year was this? Yesterday you said you met her in ‘66 or ‘67.”
“It must have been ‘67 because Polly didn’t get really bad until that last year before you came.”
“So this would have been April or May 1968?”
“That’s right. This time Moira asked me to give her a ride to the cabin. I don’t know what had become of the car. If it was even hers. It wasn’t suited to the terrain. Most of the snow was gone but the ground was still frozen or I don’t think we’d have made it in my truck.
“I paid close attention to the route this time. She noticed. ‘Next time you come,’ she said, ‘come here or they’ll all be flapping at the bar.’”
Dad holds up his hand making the mouths moving sign.
“‘Me driving off with a strange man.’ She laughed then and there was something in the laugh made me almost certain she knew.
“When she’d made us tea and we’d lit our pipes, I asked how her trip had gone.
“She looked blank.
“‘The family trouble.’
“‘Ah. My husband’s brother. Lives up by Creston.’
“‘The husband you told me about?’
“‘One was enough.’
“I waited.
“‘He wrote to me, said his niece was in trouble. I could come, spend the winter, my own cabin, run a trap line or two, maybe she’d talk to a woman.
“‘He’s a good man. Funny. Lost his wife to cancer. They never had children. The niece is the closest thing he has to a daughter.’”
“Niece as in Moira’s husband’s daughter?”
“I’m not sure. Moira didn’t say anything to indicate she’d had any part in raising the girl. But her husband could have had a child with another woman. Or there could have been another brother or sister who had a child. I’m afraid I don’t know.”
“So what did Moira find out?”
“The niece wouldn’t see her. She’d been in the States. Came back with some man. The uncle thought he was a bad lot. That the niece was scared of this man but the niece swore blind she loved him and everything was good. According to the uncle it wasn’t. He’d seen bruises on her wrists. And she was yellow, as if her liver was packing in. She wouldn’t go to the doctor. Or her man wouldn’t let her. The uncle thought he might have been dodging the law.”
“Did she have any children, the niece?”
“Yes, she did. She had a daughter.”
“How old was the daughter?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think, Dad. Please. Anything. An impression.”
“Not a baby,” he says slowly, “but still a child.”
I wait.
He shakes his head. “That’s all I can think of. She never talked about them again.”
“And you never asked?”
His brows furrow. “I might have, once, but I don’t believe she answered. I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you more.”
“Do you?”
He gazes at me. That look.
“Sorry. I’m sorry, Dad. But I think this is it.”
“Will you tell me why? I’d like to understand.”
“Just don’t laugh at me.”
“Of course not.” He’s surprised. Hurt.
“Sorry. That was uncalled for.”
I tell him about the wings. Feeling something terrible will happen if I speak. “I think someone told me that. I think I was so scared I shut everything away.”
He nods slowly. “When you came here you were tucked far down inside yourself. I had the feeling you’d made a place for yourself and nobody was going to get to you ever again. I knew—we knew—something awful must have happened to you. Beyond just the scars on your legs. I don’t mean just but ...”
“I know. I’ve spent years in therapy, trying to release those memories. But I always hit that wall of silence. Until the other day when somehow I was able to stand still, let it come. The fear behind the wall.
“It was Doug who pointed out that, if someone took me out of a bad situation and brought me to a place no-one would think to look for me, the whole plan would have depended on my silence.”
“So the way you couldn’t talk, or wouldn’t, it was because you were afraid to?”
I nod.
“And you think it was Moira who did that? Moira who scared you into silence?”
“I can’t think of anyone else.”
At least he doesn’t immediately reject the idea. Instead he says, “Let me smoke a pipe and think about this.”
When he’s sitting down again he says, “A few weeks ago, when we were talking about the time I took you to Moira’s cabin, you said you felt safe there. You weren’t afraid of being stolen away when you fell asleep. It stuck in my mind.”
I nod. “It echoed in my head after I said it.”
“But if Moira did what you think she did, wouldn’t you have been afraid of her? How could you have felt safe in her cabin?”
“I don’t know.” He’s right. Of course he’s right. It doesn’t make sense. I felt safe when I shouldn’t have. A wave of tiredness washes over me and I taste whisky. Just for a moment. That moment before you swallow the first mouthful. I stand up. “Can I see the newspaper, Dad?”
Chapter Eighty Five
“ARE YOU ALL right?”
“Mostly. I could use an AA meeting but there aren’t any around here tonight. Will you tell me more of your story? About what happened after you became Ben.”
“Mary and I camped in the river valley until it was too cold. Chased any rumour of work. Ended up in Red Deer for the winter. In the spring she met a fellow. Went off to B.C. with him. I got a job as a ranch hand. Near Drumheller. Big spread owned by a remittance man. Too fond of the booze. Aristocratic family was happy to pay him to stay on this side of the ocean. He wasn’t awash in money but he kept a good stable. Said the horses liked me. I was glad of the work.”
“You’d been living as a man for how long?�
��
“A year.”
“And with Mary gone you were alone with your secret. Was that hard?”
“There was someone else back then I’m pretty sure knew.”
“Who?”
“I don’t want to shock you.”
“Come on Dad.”
“Drumheller was like Moose Jaw, a wide open town. Playground for the whole Red River Valley. Used to be coal mines all over. There were still a few hanging on. Enough to support a couple of establishments.” He glances at me. “The miners mostly went to May Roper’s place but the fellows from the ranch favoured Fanny Ramsley’s. I went along.”
“God, weren’t you ...?”
“Nervous? Yes but the older fellows had told so many stories I felt as if I’d already been there. Besides, on pay day all the hands went. I didn’t want to stand out.
“Fanny’s place was in a coulee less than a mile east of town. It was a substantial building. The living room must have been thirty feet square. They had a piano. Used to be a coloured cook called Mamie Carter, the best cook in the valley, they said. She played the piano whenever she wasn’t cooking and Fanny worked the bar. Fellows danced and drank and played poker and sat about. I’m not saying there was no sex going on.
“Along two sides of that big room ran a corridor with half a dozen rooms opening off it. But even in my day there were plenty of men there for the music and the cooking and the company. In the old days, when the mine operators were having a get-together, or the miner’s union, the Legion, the Elks for that matter, that’s where they’d go. Dinner at Fanny’s. It was the most comfortable place around. A lot more civilized than the bunkhouse at a ranch or a miner’s shack or any homestead.
“The girls didn’t lack for offers of marriage. It was always a worry to Fanny, keeping staff. ‘They don’t know what they’re getting themselves into,’ she’d say about the ones who went off to marry a miner or a homesteader. Working for her, the girls had some comfort and time to themselves. They’d sit around and do fancy work or read or tend to the flower garden. One girl kept chickens, the Polish ones with a silly top-knot. They could buy the finest clothes any store in Drumheller carried, but the smart girls saved their money. In time they’d go on to set up a house of their own. Not too many other ways a woman could come to own her own property in those days.”
It sounds like such a sensible business proposition. Like Theresa with her escort service.
“So you see it was different then. There wasn’t a lot of prejudice. In the early days it was how most of the women came to the prairies.”
The white women, but I don’t say that out loud. “What about the police? Wasn’t it against the law?”
He shrugs. “Fanny said as long as you were outside the city limits, the police wouldn’t bother you. If the girls started parading their finery down Main Street that might cause trouble. Especially if they were better dressed than the first ladies of the town. Then worthy citizens would start some sort of Moral Reform Society to put pressure on the authorities, but generally the police just made a show of doing something. They knew the trade wasn’t going away and they’d just as soon deal with a known quantity.” Dad yawns. “I think it’s time for bed.”
“There’s something you haven’t told me.”
“What?” He gazes blandly at me.
“You said someone back then guessed your secret.”
“Fanny, I think. Not that she said anything but the girls didn’t tease me the way they did the other shy fellows. As a matter of fact ...” He hesitates.
“What?”
“Well, I’ve wondered since whether she was interested in me herself.”
“Was she gay?”
“I don’t know. It didn’t go anywhere. I was ridiculously naive. We enjoyed each other’s company. She liked to read. She liked books by the Americans who lived in Paris. Fitzgerald. Hemingway, Anais Nin. ‘The French know how to live,’ she used to say. She was teaching herself the language. So she could read Collette in the original. She’d dreamed of taking a trip to France but trade wasn’t what it used to be.” He’s looking at me, a half smile on his lips.
“Where did she get the books?”
“The fellow who ran the local newspaper had literary ambitions.”
“What was she like, Fanny?”
“Fiercely intelligent. She wasn’t beautiful—her features were too big for her face—but she had great vitality. According to her, she was what the French call jolie laide.”
“And she was attracted to you?”
“She seemed”—he hesitates—“alert when I was around.”
“But you didn’t think of yourself as gay?”
“No.”
“What did you tell yourself? About who you were?”
“Or what I was? To a degree that must surprise you, I didn’t. As long as I didn’t have a name I could just be myself. Perhaps I stayed in a state of innocence so I wouldn’t have to find a name for myself, for what I felt. That was what was so astonishing about Polly. That moment in the clearing. Walking into her arms. I know what you are. And what you are not. I walked out of my un-knowing. It was gone. From now on we would know together.”
“Expelled from Eden?”
“It was time.”
Chapter Eighty Six
WE EAT OUR oatmeal in silence. Dad seems far away, the way the mountains do some days. I woke with the smell of spruce and smoke in my nostrils. The feeling of safety that makes no sense. Makes nonsense of everything.
When he puts his spoon down I say, “You’re going to tell me about Mum, aren’t you?”
He’s gazing at the window, no sign he heard me.
“About the money Mum somehow acquired.”
Silence.
“You must have asked her about it.”
“She asked me not to.” His voice is flat.
“And you didn’t?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“But what did you think?
“About what I think now.”
I wait. Finally I can’t help it. “That whole happy brothel story yesterday. I’m not stupid. I live ...”
His eyes stop me. After a moment he says, “This is not mine to tell.”
“Mum’s dead, Dad.”
“I’m aware of that.” He glares at me. I glare back. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I think I do.”
He stares at me. “Very well. But first I’m going to smoke my morning pipe. Alone.”
Beyond the window, beyond the blackened stems and shrunken heads of the sunflowers, the mountains march across the horizon, rank upon rank. The Mum I knew stood here. And the one who banged her head until it bled, who drank and raged. The other mother. I close my eyes, grip the edge of the sink, dizzy the way I’d get dizzy lying on my back watching the wind chase clouds across the sky. I’d close my eyes then, sun red behind the lids, the buzzing of bees in the flowers, a fly tickling my arm. Under me the springiness of twigs, thin turf over rock. Mum spreading out a picnic, Dad striding toward her, me lying further up the slope, invisible in a slight hollow. ‘Lunch,’ Mum would call, her voice echoing from the rock faces.
Dad takes his time settling back into his Morris chair. He’s lost the angry raptor look. At last he says, “It really was different, you know, back then. And what was she supposed to do? Fourteen years old, out on her own, no money, no education, no family.”
“It’s why she chose that church, isn’t it? She couldn’t forgive herself.”
“Forgiveness.” Dad snorts. “They talked about forgiveness all the time but they never let anyone forget their sins. Too busy feasting on them. Give me a brothel over a church any day.”
“Please tell me what you know.”
“All right. The money she left you. Polly always had a head for business. She’d read the financial pages, study the stock prices. I used to tease her. ‘Dreaming of making us rich?’ Now, I think she had money invested. Whatever was left over from buying the house and
the land. I really don’t know how much that was or where it came from.”
“But you suspect.”
“You’re sure you want to know about this?”
“Yes.”
“There were two things she let slip. The first was in the early days. We’d both had a bit to drink. We were sitting on a rock and she hoisted up her skirt, stretched out her leg, twisted her foot this way and that. For some reason she didn’t have shoes on. ‘I used to be a dancer,’ she said, ‘on the stage.’
“‘You’re still a dancer,’ I said. I was thinking about the step-dancing she did.
“‘Not like that,’ she said, then she clammed up.”
“That was it?”
He nods.
After a bit I ask, “Is that where the cane comes in? It was part of some sort of stage show? A burlesque?” Mum a burlesque dancer. Fishnet stockings and a top hat. That’s Cabaret. “Did they have burlesque shows in the Prairies? Or was it before she came West.”
The look on Dad’s face tells me it’s not going to be this easy. “What was the second thing?”
“When the drinking got bad, there was one particular night. I must have remonstrated with her about something, I don’t remember what. She was beside herself, her face all twisted up.
“‘You’re nothing.’ She spat the words at me. ‘You can’t do it. You can’t give me what I want.’
“No arguing with that. The harsher the words she hurled, the further inside I went. It maddened her. Perhaps that was what I wanted. You can’t get me.
“But she could. That night she said, ‘Men who had their pick, real men, they picked me. They’d ask for me.’ She caught herself then but it was too late.”
His eyes are scorched. The skin surrounding them is ashen.
“Dad, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed.”
“Let me finish. We never spoke of it again. But it took hold of me, that image. I’d be out with the sheep, checking the water troughs, wind ruffling the grass, all I could see would be the girls parading around for the men to choose. As if I was outside, looking in at a lighted room. I couldn’t look at Polly without seeing the men taking their pick.
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