Maccloud falls, p.34
macCLOUD FALLS, page 34
‘No, I actually think I want you nearby tonight.’
‘Frightened of the bears?’
‘No. Just… I don’t know why, I just I want you near.’
‘On the other side of that pillow wall?’
‘Yes. That’s to stop you rolling over on top of me.’
‘I see...’
‘Because of the operation.’ She touched her left breast with her fingertips. ‘It’s still very painful.’
He sat down on the bed, sobered. ‘Ah. Of course. I hadn’t thought of that. Hasn’t it healed?’
‘It has, sort of. But it still hurts to the touch.’
‘Is it very big?’
‘What?’
‘The scar.’
She didn’t answer, but her look said none of your business. She got up, fished out the new toilet bag and nightdress she’d bought in Merritt from her case, and headed for the bathroom. At the door, she stopped and glanced back at him. He was already arranging his things on the stand by the bed, taking off his watch and bending to undo his shoelaces. He looked up at her. ‘What?’ he said.
‘It feels huge,’ she said, then left the room.
He was in bed behind the pillow divide when she came back, facing the wall. He’d switched the main light out and a blue-shaded lamp at her side on. She turned that off, slipped silently under the heavy quilt and lay facing away from him. Neither moved, listening instead for the sound of the other breathing, as their rhythms slowly synchronised, but neither slept. At length she turned onto her back and her hand fell on the pillow divide. He turned too and their arms touched. Her fingers closed around his, he stretched and below the pillow wall, his toes met her toes. They lay like that, connected yet apart, for what seemed hours of darkness. Then she asked softly if he was asleep. He said no, he couldn’t, he was thinking.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Seems like they’ve spent their whole lives together here, slowly building a home piece by piece, making everything they need. And I was wondering, what have I built? Just a mountain of books by other people.’
She gave out a little sigh of amusement and squeezed his hand. ‘There’s worse things to have done.’ After a moment, she added ‘I was thinking what it must have felt like when the fires threatened, to have to put your things in the creek like that.’
‘I know,’ he said, and waited, but she didn’t elaborate.
Slowly drunken sleep brought an end to a long long day.
Morning came in through the yellow curtains as a glow of light inching across the patterned quilt, square by square. By the time it reached the pillows, the kitchen downstairs was issuing aromas of a large breakfast.
He rose first, and went to the window to look out. Last night they’d arrived in the dark, and this first glimpse of where they’d got to amazed him.
‘Good God!’
She opened her eyes and sat up. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘The view,’ he said. ‘It’s like the Canada I always pictured.’
She got out of bed in her new-bought nightie and peered out over his shoulder. In the far distance, a range of snow-caps shone almost pink in the morning light. In front of that lay ridge upon forested ridge of lower peaks, like ocean waves frozen in motion, until the nearest rose, louring above the valley where the cabin stood, and the creek ran dipping in and out of sight.
‘Yep,’ she said. ‘That’s my Canada.’ But as soon as she’d said it, she knew that wasn’t quite true. Her Canada was Vancouver, with its restaurants and bars, its high-rise downtown, its colonial suburban mansions, its beaches and parks - at best, the Gulf islands, with their easy wilderness, no more than a ferry journey away.
Here there was no human presence anywhere to be seen, no intervention in the wilderness, besides that of their hosts, but that, they could see, was fairly extensive. The clearing stretched away from the house quite a distance, and everywhere were signs of activity – a garden full of polytunnels, cultivated patches with healthy green growth visible, around that various greenhouses and sheds including the old timber structure with the moose head and antlers they had come upon in the darkness the night before. As they stood at the window, in that moment they felt the warmth of the other closer than ever before, and the vague yet clear scent of their true identities, regardless of what their names were.
He was the first to move away, to the clothes he’d pulled off drunkenly the night before, the jeans and the shirt he’d bundled. He found clean socks, and left her, expecting their hosts to be waiting. But there was no one bar Hero who was still moping at being left downstairs. He looked up, hopeful to see his love, but settled for Gil’s petting anyway. On the stove lay eggs and bacon, hotcakes, beans and toast, a pot of coffee, all seemingly abandoned. Then he saw a note on the table: Gone to do morning chores – will be back soon. Eat and make yourselves at home in the meantime, please! It wasn’t all that late, 8.30-ish, but of course they were busy people with lots to take care of.
She showered and dressed, and went down to find him sitting at the table, eating.
‘All alone?’ she asked, as she gave her dog a morning hug.
He pointed to the note and continued chewing.
‘Hmm, okay,’ she said, when she’d read it. ‘Has he been out? Have you fed him?’
‘Yes, he went out earlier and no, I thought you would want to.’
By the time Sara appeared at the back door with a bucket half-full of eggs, they had all eaten plenty, and she had washed their dishes at the sink. Hero jumped up, wagging his tail, and trotted over to Sara, greeting her like an old friend. She explained, while petting him, that Gordon had some errands to run in Little Forks but would be back any minute, then they’d get a tour of the property.
‘Not too hungover then,’ Sara said, as she cleared away the leftovers. Then they heard the sound of an engine and Gordon’s truck rolled into view. He brought a few grocery bags in, and once they’d unpacked them Sara suggested the tour. They set off, two dogs and four people, down the track through the garden with its teeming green life at high summer, wooden tipi frames of peas and beans, sunflowers, and the leafy heads of potatoes and carrots, down towards the old cabin with the moose skeleton. There, Gordon had something to show them — his great-grandfather’s buffalo coat, worn on horseback while driving the herds. Gil was amazed.
‘Don’t you remember last night, you specifically asked to see it? Gordon asked.
Gil laughed. ‘I don’t recall too much of last night. The whole day was a blur.’
The coat was simply the hide of the beast, huge and heavy and smelly, shaped into something that would fit over a large man’s shoulders. Gordon insisted that Gil try it on, then fished out from the cabin the buffalo rifle that went with it. The coat swamped him. Gordon handed the rifle to Gil, saying ‘Sharps 1874. Highly accurate up to five hundred yards, maximum range a thousand. Fires eight to ten shots a minute.’
Gil took the gun from him and immediately felt the weight of the thing. ‘It’s pretty heavy,’ he said, regaining his balance.
‘Nearly ten pounds,’ Gordon said, smiling.
‘How could anybody move under all this weight?’ Gil asked.
‘Didn’t have to move. Just had to be able to sit square on a horse and shoot. Would you like to feel its kick?’’
‘Ah no, I think this is enough,’ Gil said, sheepishly. And so the Scotsman stood looking overwhelmed, draped in buffalo hide, holding the buffalo rifle across his chest like a greenhorn, next to his host, while Veronika took pictures and Hero sniffed at the coat, unsure what this new scent was. The fur on his neck and back bristled, while Benji the bear dog sat unmoved, watching him with faint canine disdain.
When the photo session was over and the laughter subsided, they carried on down the slope towards the creek. As soon as the water came into view, Hero set off towards it at full speed and disappeared over the bank.
‘Where’s he off to?’ Sara asked.
They all looked at Veronika and she first shrugged, then smiled. ‘It’s just a thing he does,’ she answered. ‘Running water gets him all worked up.’
He began to bark and when they came to the bank he was up to his middle in the flowing stream, attempting to bite the breaking water where it tumbled over a rocky drop, and yapping at it when he couldn’t.
Veronika said, ‘I think he thinks he’s herding it.’
Benji stood watching for a while, as if he couldn’t figure what Hero was doing, then suddenly jumped into the pool beside him, splashing around, occasionally barking in a gruff beardog way.
‘Would you look at him,’ Sara laughed, ‘the big puppy!’
Gordon grinned too, then carried on along the bank. At a point where the creek narrowed and the stream grew faster was another small shed, built astride the flow. ‘This is our turbine,’ he said, matter-of-factly, ‘All our electricity comes from here.’
‘Wow,’ Veronika said. ‘And you built this too?’
‘Well, not the parts, but I put it all together. Essentially it’s very simple. Creek drives a turbine, turbine drives a rotor which is a wheel with magnets inside. That spins around faced onto a stator, a static part with magnetic coils, and hey-ho, kinetic energy becomes electricity.’
‘So how did you figure it out?’ she asked.
‘You recall a thing called the Whole Earth Catalogue?’
‘Yes,’ Gil said. ‘I still see copies of that circulating. It was a kind of hippie guide to self-sufficiency, first produced in California, I think around 1970. Part of that back to the earth, post-Woodstock movement.’
‘I believe so. Anyway, the rudiments were in there, plus places to order parts from. Took a while to get it up and running, but you know, there’s no shortage of water up here. Of course, we’ve renewed it all since then, more efficient equipment, but the first plant was Whole Earth Catalogue.’
‘So you guys were hippies?’ Veronika asked Sara, who laughed.
‘Lord no, not me,’ she said. ‘I was a good Mennonite daughter. Though Gordon had a lot of hair back then. But you know that was our generation and some of those ideas seemed like good ones. When we bought the land here one of the reasons we could afford it was because it had no amenities.’
The dogs caught up with them at the hydro plant, Hero wet from snout to tail, looking a fraction of the size he did when his fur was dry. He shook himself, sending a spray over everyone, and seemed intrigued by the sounds from the turbine, but had barked himself out. They walked on down the side of the creek until they came to a pool where the water ran slow.
‘And this,’ said Gordon, ‘is where we had to put everything when the wildfires were threatening.’ Gil stared at the pool of water, trying to picture the scene.
‘Took us two days of wrapping everything in plastic and trying to seal it,’ Sara added, ruefully. ‘Still, when we put it all in the water, I did not expect to see any of it again.’
‘So how close did the fires reach?’ Gil asked.
‘Came from southwest, behind the cabin,’ Gordon said, pointing the direction. ‘We could see the tops of the flames over there quite clearly
when the smoke wasn’t too bad. About 2k away at their closest.’
Veronika’s horror at the thought was visible. ‘What did you do?’ she asked Sara, who shivered, remembering.
‘There wasn’t much we could do after we’d put all our things in the creek here. Gordon went off to see what he could do to help fight the fire. I sat and waited for the message to say we had to clear out. The truck was all packed up and we had friends we could stay with standing by. I was to drive up there as soon as I got the word. I suppose I wept some at the thought that everything we’d built here might be carried away in a day.’
They walked on down in silence, along the bank of the creek where it spread out onto a flat, a little meadow alive with summer green growth. They waded ankle-deep through clover, until, all of a sudden, Veronika gave out a yelp. Gil spun round, expecting to see her lying prostrate after some backwoods creature had bitten her, but instead she was standing beaming the broadest smile possible.
‘I can’t believe it!’ she exclaimed, holding something up for them all to see. ‘All my life I’ve searched for one.’ They looked and saw that it was an actual four-leaved clover, and a very large one at that, each leaf almost the size of a loonie.
‘Well, aren’t you the lucky one,’ Sara said, with a slightly envious tone. ‘I’ve looked for one here for years myself and never found anything.’
Veronika’s face at that moment was like a five-year-old girl’s who had stumbled on the loveliest of jewels. She stood holding up the prize, saying, ‘See!’ to everyone, even Hero, who was gazing at his loved one as if he understood her joy precisely, with his tongue out and a faint doggy smile on his lips. ‘Look, Gil,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe it.’
So he went over to where she stood, closely examined the lucky find, then impulsively kissed her gently on the nose. ‘It’s perfect,’ he said. ‘And a very good omen, for what’s behind you and what lies ahead.’
She was shocked by the little kiss, and slightly taken aback. She wondered what he could possibly know of her true situation, other than the cancer treatment. Probably that was what he meant. She hadn’t thought about her cell all day, nor the messages there may be awaiting her when she got back on grid again, but now she did and it worried her – though the sight of the four-leaf clover lifted her mood again when she looked at it. She would keep staring at that, she decided. Focus on the good.
Sara and Gordon were already down the path a distance, with Benji close behind, but when they came to a bend in the creek, they stopped and waited. As Gil, Veronika and Hero caught them up, they saw the new house they’d spoken of gradually materialising from behind the rise.
It wasn’t at all like anything else on the property, but a very modern design, not timber, blockwork, with big windows and a sloping pink pan-tiled roof that caught the sunlight. But as they approached they could see that only the section nearest the creek had a roof as yet, and that the remaining half or more of the structure was only partially built, and covered by a tarpaulin, under shelter of an enormous cedar.
‘My dream kitchen,’ Sara said, as she opened the door to the finished quarter. ‘No smoky old stove in here, but the latest gas hob.’
‘Well,’ Veronika replied, looking around her. ‘It’s certainly different from the other house. And so spacious.’
‘Different is good. I’ve been stoking that thing for thirty years and you get tired of trying to get a cranky old stove to the right temperature for baking. And keeping it there is another struggle.’ She looked to Veronika for confirmation, but the glassy stare in the visitor’s eyes suggested she wasn’t much of a baker. Instead, she stood with her four-leaf clover in her hand, staring out through the windows to the forest over the water.
‘Beautiful views, Sara,’ she said.
‘Yes, I suppose they are. To tell the truth, I tend to take it all for granted, how beautiful it is here, though that was why we first built the treehouse down here for the children.’
Gordon, who’d been rooting around, picking up some loose wiring cable and tucking it into a cupboard while Gil watched, suddenly connected with his wife’s line of thought.
‘Ah yes, the treehouse. You have to see that,’ he said, grinning. So they followed him through a makeshift doorway into the rear of the house, an area still without a proper floor. ‘Watch your step there,’ he said, stopping to point to left and then right. ‘The bedrooms will be two either side of the feature staircase. As you can see, it’s not much of a feature so far.’ And it wasn’t, just a rudimentary ladder leading straight up to a hatch.
One by one they climbed the rungs, first Gordon, then Veronika, then Gil, and lastly Sara, entering a sawdusty realm filled with the scent of wood. This space above was stunning, wide and expansive, with open views across the creek, though the window frames were as yet without glass. And turning towards the shadowed side, they saw that the great cedar visible from outside was not simply behind the house, it was actually inside – at least, its trunk and some lower boughs were, all polished to a high finish. In fact, it was the centrepiece of everything. Gil and Veronika walked in slow circles around it, wowing, while staring up at the amazing structure, the organic puzzle of natural curves, odd shapes, and unfilled spaces where the tarp above still could be seen.
‘This is incredible,’ Veronika said at last.
‘One day it will be, I hope,’ Gordon said, grinning, ‘The original treehouse is what you can see on that bough there.’ And gazing up they could indeed see a small structure tucked into the trunk above, a little wooden boxhouse with a window, sat upon a platform on a strong bough. It was as if it was a kind of shrine, around which a great temple was being constructed, a temple to childhood.
‘Where are your children now?’ Veronika asked.
‘All grown up,’ Sara answered. ‘One’s in Vancouver, one’s in Kamloops, and the youngest is travelling somewhere in the States right now.’
‘They must have loved it here,’ Gil said, meaning the treehouse, but Gordon responded with the place as a whole in mind.
‘They did, but they outgrew it. Wanted to see what the rest of the world was like. Places where people didn’t have to make everything themselves, where they could just buy stuff and order take-out. Gadgets and all that. Can’t blame them, really, for being curious.’ But something in his resigned tone suggested that he did, or at least had once done.
‘Maybe they’ll come back when they’ve seen enough,’ Veronika said, more to Sara than to her husband. Sara gave a little smile in response, but there was a sadness underneath that surface.
‘The world is full of wonders, that’s true. But this, this is a work of art too,’ Gil observed, running his hand over the fibrous lines on the smooth trunk of the cedar. ‘It must have taken you forever to get this finish.’
‘Sure has,’ Gordon nodded.
‘Hah! Finish! That’s a fine word,’ Sara said sharply. ‘He’s been spending all his time down here, just sanding that blasted tree.’ Gil and Veronika exchanged knowing glances – the territory was clearly disputed – but Gordon didn’t seem too troubled by her words. He just shrugged.
