by Pat Mestern
“It’s too late to complain now anyway,” Ollie said. “Looks like you’ve already disturbed most of the burial ground. By the time I get through to a thick head in authority, the dock will be built. Who in the government cares about an Indian burial ground, even if it is connected to a Christian church?”
“So much for the church immortal,” Nat said. “The building burned down long ago.”
Harry now had two full bags of bones in the canoe and was quickly filling the third. He also had accumulated a small pile of bits of beadwork and small potsherds which he placed near the canoe.
“Looks like the Leprechaun is collecting someone’s ancestors,” Nat said, finally realizing what Harry was up to. “What are you planning to do with your relics, Harry? Did I give you permission to remove anything from the site?”
“I don’t need to ask. The dead are as much a part of this earth as the living,” Harry said quietly. “The Indians were here before us. They deserve respect. I’m gathering these bones to rebury somewhere safe, where they won’t be the forgotten ones.”
“That’s the most I’ve ever heard you speak,” Nat said. “When you cut my hair you hardly completed a sentence. Tell you what. I’m not heartless. I do understand what you’re trying to do. How be you stay here while we’re digging around. Then you can pick all the bones you can find. You can bunk with the gang. You’re not on the trapline at this time of the year.”
“I could do that if I’m not needed in camp,” Harry said.
“If you want to hang out with a gang of thieves, I won’t stop you,” Ollie said. “We can make a burial ground near the cabin to honour Nibi’s ancestors.”
“I promise on my Charlotte’s grave that I’ll gather as much as I can. I will dig and pick until there’s not a bone or fragment left that I can see.” Harry crossed his heart. “If anyone desecrated Charlotte’s grave I wouldn’t hesitate to use a gun.”
“You can move bones but this place will always hold their spirits,” Nibi said, “Especially that of the child.”
September 1935
The one thing Harry liked most about the north was the night sky, and when conditions dictated it should happen, the display of northern lights. The sound of their zinging through the quietude of an evening was a special symphony, played for a select few.
Harry, Ollie, and Nibi sat on the cove cliff watching the colours of the Aurora Borealis reflect in the quiet waters of the lake. Never had Harry experienced such peace. Never had he felt so close to Charlotte. The air seemed electric with her presence. “She’s here,” he whispered to Nibi. “My Charlotte’s here. I can almost reach out and touch her.”
“So is my child,” Nibi said. “Some of us believe the lights are the torches of the people who have gone before, showing the way to those still here. We feel that the whistling and crackling are the voices of the ancestors trying to talk with us. If you understand what the Selamiut, the sky dwellers are saying, you must always answer in a whisper. That shows them respect.”
The lights of the northern dawn crackled over the silhouette of forest and the hills of the Precambrian shield. Colours rippled in layers bottom to top and danced from horizon to horizon.
“Grandmother called them the wa-wa-sayg. When she was very elderly and ready to die, she’d stand with her arms out, on the highest point in our camp, waiting to be taken away. If you hear Charlotte, what is she telling you?”
“Nothing that I understand,” Harry said. “But I sense that she’s here, close to me. That’s all I need to know.”
“You are a special man,” Nibi said. “You are so special that I must tell you the story of my child.”
“Are you sure it’s the time and place to confide that information to Harry?” Ollie asked.
“Yes,” Nibi said. “Because of what he did to preserve the bones of my child and ancestors, he should know.”
“I only did what was right,” Harry said. “No graves should be destroyed in such a way.”
“Not many understand that,” Ollie said. “Only those who’ve lost someone dear to them would be so driven to protect, or intervene.”
“Ollie, the grave of your child should never have been disturbed the way it was,” Harry said.
“Not Ollie’s child, Tomas’s child. That’s what you need to know. The last body placed in the cemetery was Tomas’s child.”
“Tomas had a child?”
“I lay with Tomas for three winters. The child was not a year old when it died. A boy. We wrapped him in a rabbit-skin blanket and placed his body in the cemetery near the grave of his grandfather.
“You and Tomas lived like man and wife?”
“Harry, don’t pass judgment on me like the missionary did. The child was no less loved for a blessing not made over us, or him. Winters are long and lonely. The warmth of a man in the bush is more important than words in thin air in a church.”
“I just assumed Ollie was the father,” Harry said. “I’m sure that Mrs. Carmello didn’t know about the child.”
“Although I lived with Tomas and Nibi, I respected their bond and left them alone,” Ollie said. “I loved the child too, like I would a child of my loins. When Tomas packsacked it after the child’s death it was easy to give my love to Nibi.”
“Why did Tomas leave if he had a home and a … woman here?”
“You must know what a free spirit Tomas was, and still is,” Ollie said. “He told me that he left home in the first place—couldn’t bide the rules his mother imposed, hated the village, the derogatory comments about his Italian heritage.”
“Tomas used his fists on anyone badmouthing Frankie or Charlotte, or me too,” Harry said. “Charlotte told me that after he left home he didn’t keep in touch on a regular basis. He’d turn up every once in a while to visit but didn’t write much. She did know that he was a roustabout on tramp steamers that went to South America.”
“What he probably didn’t mention is that he learned to fly a plane then moved liquor and other contraband across borders. His penchant for a good fight served him well. Somewhere along the line things got too hot for him. Then he lit out for Canada, for home and the north, figuring no one would find him up here,” Ollie said
“I knew he could fly a plane,” Harry said. “He told me that just before I came up here.”
“He was a good pilot. His plan was to save his pennies to buy a bush plane, a pontooner. He’d be a wealthy fella if he had a fleet of planes round here. Even one would give him a decent living.”
“No one got to know Tomas as well as Frankie and Charlotte,” Harry said. “He was the eldest Carmello child; then there were two babies that died, then Frankie and the last born, my Charlotte.”
Nibi touched Harry on his arm. “Charlotte must have been a wonderful person that you wear your love so openly, so close to your heart.”
“Charlotte looked beyond the physical to the inner soul. She was a gentle, sensitive spirit who saw the good in everyone. She would understand the messages carried by the Northern Lights.”
“What are the lights telling you tonight, Nibi,” Ollie asked.
“As the skies dance tonight I see A’Kwenzie, the wise old man, and Maymayguishi, the little people who misplace things, and Wendigo, the evil spirit who likes to make life miserable for everyone. A’Kwenzie brought Tomas to me. Maymayguishi misplaced my better judgment and Wendigo took my child.”
“Were there more liaisons between Tomas and other women?” Harry asked.
Ollie laughed. “The Lord alone knows how many little Carmellos are running around the streets of every port those tramp steamers lay in at. Tomas is what you might call a virile fella with a penchant for adventure, regardless the risk. How would you ever go about finding any offspring from his casual affairs? He never stayed in one port long enough to know anything but a half dozen good drinking holes, and maybe as many women.”
“He is so different from you, Harry, who still treasures your love for your woman.” Nibi touched Harry’s arm again
. “It speaks well of you that one man can love a woman so much he would keep the bond alive. That’s what A’Kwenzie is whispering to me tonight. He also tells me that you’ll stay awhile in the north.”
“I’ve no intention of leaving any time soon,” Harry said. “My mother doesn’t need me. Frankie writes that Tomas is courting a woman with the intentions of marrying her. He’s found a job too.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Tomas I know,” Ollie said. “He must have fallen hard for the woman that he’d stay south. Was Charlotte as complicated a person as Tomas?”
“Charlotte died so young that she didn’t have time to become a complex person.” Harry said.
“And the other brother, Frankie?”
“He’s as open as Charlotte was. He’s honest, kind, hardworking, eccentric, but that runs in the Carmello family. Charlotte used to say that eccentricity adds to one’s character. Frankie is a pacifist, wouldn’t fight, even if it meant his life. He’d never survive in the north. He couldn’t kill an animal. He’d starve first.”
A loon sounded its lonely, spine-tingling call. Another answered from the cove.
“The true call of the north,” Harry said.
Ollie laughed, softly, not to disturb the loons. “Harry Forest, there’s one thing that the northern lights bring out in you. You’ve talked more tonight than in the past six months.”
Harry, surprised by his verbosity, had to agree. “It’s the atmosphere brings out the words,” he said. “You know that when I first arrived I wasn’t sure that a person who was raised a strict no-nonsense Presbyterian could understand the language of northern land, water, and sky.”
“It’s a religious experience, no doubt,” Ollie said. “For all I’m an Olsen, I was raised a Methodist yet here I feel closer to God than in any church I’ve attended.”
“And, I am a child of the forest,” Nibi said.
February 1938
Dear Frankie and Tomas:
Tomas, who’d have given thought that seven years could pass so quickly. You’re still with your mom in the south while I’m enjoying my bush solitude.
As the world gears up for another great conflict, even the northern reaches of Ontario are not immune to speculations. Wherever you go, and whoever you meet, the topic is all about Germany, England, and war. Of course everyone knows a showdown is coming. The question is, how soon.
You asked what I’d do should, no, WHEN, war is finally declared. Tomas, it makes sense you’d be one of the first to sign up. Frankie, to be a conscientious objector is not, in my opinion, a failing. Your decision shows you have a conviction to stand up for what you believe. The question for both of you, even though you are Canadian-born, will our government see you as Canadians, or the enemy, if Italy is an ally of Germany and fighting on the opposite side?
I am not soldier material. I believe that Hitler must be stopped but unlike you, Tomas, I could never kill a man, even if he be an armed enemy with a gun pointed at me. I’d say “Shoot me and be done with it. At any rate, I doubt that given my height, and sight problems, I’d pass muster requirements. I can cut hair and cook. I’ve become a pretty good cook.
Tomas, should push come to shove, you know Nibi and Ollie will handle the trapline. I have it in my mind that this packsacker will head south in the spring, but not back to live with mother. can’t yet bear to be in the same village where my beloved Charlotte is buried.
I am sorry that your romantic liaison did not last; that your “I do” became “I do for a time until I get bored.” You wrote that the feelings of love are fleeting at best and diminish quickly. Time was not wasted in your case because your mother needed you. I had to leave after Charlotte died. You know why so I need not elaborate.
Frankie, you write that love, even if lost through death, survives forever in one’s heart -two opinions from two very different people. You are right in my situation.
The solitude of the bush has been my salvation. It has increased my love for Charlotte. This might not make sense to a he-man like you, Tomas’ but the ring that graces her finger is my promise that I am Charlotte’s, forever. That was the pact we made when we decided to marry and that is the promise I keep now. Eccentricity doesn’t only run in the Carmello family.
There is one more bit of information that you will find interesting, Tomas. Ollie has instructed me to tell you some good news. There will finally be a baby in the Olsen cabin. Ollie is excited to be a father, in his old age as he so blithely said. Nibi is less enthusiastic, wondering how a child will survive in the bush. As always,
Harry F.
Chapter 3
July 2004
London, Ontario
“Tell me again just why we are cruising these particular streets,” Don said.
“We’re looking for the building Harry bought after the war. He had a barbershop on the first floor and lived on the second, always with a dog as his companion, according to Mother.”
“It doesn’t appear that there’s much left of the old streetscape now, not with all the new condos and apartment buildings in the neighbourhood.”
“Everything changes, and sometimes not for the best,” Ramona said. “I haven’t been here in years. Dad and Mother brought me to Storybook Gardens when I was a child. I do recall visiting someone in a barbershop. I was allowed to sit in a comfortable chair and then fell asleep curled up against a big dog that lay in the sun coming through the window. I didn’t realize it was Harry until mother told me in 1975.”
“And the barbershop is where he met Serena and Lorraine DiBruitso?”
“Yes, in 1951 or ’52. Look. There’s a restaurant on the corner that looks as though it’s been around for a while. Let’s have lunch. Perhaps someone who works there will still remember Packsacker’s Barbershop.”
“That’s what he called his business?”
“Yes, when he came to London to sign up for the war, he hadn’t planned to stay in the area. How wrong he was. According to Mother, he planned to head north again after the war. She said that Harry told Dad on a number of occasions that he missed the solitude of the wilderness.”
“What changed his mind?”
“After the discovery of uranium in the Algoma District the area just exploded with activity. When Tomas went back north again he set up a float plane business and got in on the ground floor of the rush. He kept his mouth shut about certain explorations and made a fortune.”
“What about Ollie and Nibi?”
“After Tomas built a retreat on Matinenda, Ollie and Nibi became caretakers for the property. Ollie still did a bit of trapping. Nibi made moccasins and leather handbags for the tourist trade. Ollie taught me all about rocks, semiprecious stones, Indian artifacts, and natural oddities. Nibi showed me how to do beadwork.”
“You actually spent time with Ollie and Nibi?”
“When I was a teenager, I went north with Dad and Grandmother Carmello every summer. We spent time at Uncle Tomas’s retreat. Ollie and Nibi’s little cabin was within eyeball distance of the main house. Harry had a small cabin not far away from Ollie’s. I know from what Grandma Carmello told me that Harry went north every summer. I never saw him there. I never went near his cabin; well really, it was a hovel.
“This might be an odd question but when did you first meet Harry?”
“I think I first saw Harry in 1953 when Serena and Lorraine came to live in the village. I know he introduced them to Grandmother. I imagine that he saw it as an Italian helping an Italian. I think that a brief encounter started a fixation for me on his part that lasted until he died.”
“Are you up for a bite to eat?”
“Yes,” Ramona said. “I’m hungry.”
Seated in the London Grill, Ramona thought that she’d stepped back in time. “I must say this place has some interesting decorations. Nineteen sixties decor is all the rage now in some eateries.”
“Yeah, but this is the real thing. It seems nothing’s changed but the owner, according to the waitress.”
An older woman with “Gertrude” embroidered on a blue blouse, put two glasses of water and napkin-wrapped cutlery on the table. “Decided yet what you’ll have?”
“I’ll have the egg salad on rye,” Ramona said. “It’s nice to see the chef’s added olives to the filling.”
“And to drink?”
“Tea.”
“Green or regular?”
“Regular”
“Honey?”
“Ramona laughed, “The lady must be talking to you, Don?”
“I meant for the tea, darlin’ although the guy does look like a real honey.”
“No thanks, but a nice touch and fast retort.” Ramona laughed at the look on Don’s face when the waitress’s comment registered.
“The boss puts the stuff in his tea so expects others might want it too. I have to ask. Lambkins, have you made up your mind yet?”
Don chuckled. “Lambkins. That brings back memories. My mother called all babies she saw lambkins. I see you don’t have tomato soup and grilled cheese on the menu. I’ll have to settle for the cheeseburger and fries. I forgot to bring a can of tomato soup; an inside joke I’ll explain later, Ramona.”
Gertrude gave Don a strange look then said, “Coffee? You look like a coffee man.”
“Strong and hot. Have you worked here long?” Dan handed both menus to Gertrude.
“On and off for forty years.”
“Then you’d maybe have known Harry Forest?”
“Little guy. Big ears. Bald head. Barber. Liked ham on rye,” Gertrude said. “He must be an old man now.”
“Unfortunately, he died in January this year.”
“People don’t live forever. Everyone falls off their twig eventually,” Gertrude said. “You want your drinks before, with, or after your meal?”
“Before,” both said in unison.
When Gertrude returned with the hot beverages she said, “Sometimes, a young girl and good-looking woman came into the restaurant with Harry. He spoke with the girl more than with the woman, and always paid the bill for the three.”