After River (22 page)

I
BARGAINED WITH
God. As my parents rushed Boyer to the hospital, I knelt on the linoleum floor in the parlour. I promised untold penitence in return for my brother's life. As the hours passed, I pleaded to, and then in anger, threatened, a nonchalant God, a God who allowed so much tragedy to strike our family. Still, as I waited for a phone call I did not want to answer, I held little hope that the body that Mom and Dad wrapped in wet towels and laid on quilts in the back of the pick-up truck, would return to us as Boyer.

Before dawn, as the shadows of the night pulled back over the mountains, Morgan and Carl, soot-covered and tired, returned home from Boyer's cabin. The three of us sat at the kitchen table. Coffee grew cold in mugs cupped in still hands. My brothers spoke in hushed voices about how everything was lost in the fire. Boyer's books, River's journals, all ashes. I listened, mute with guilt, while they speculated over what caused the fire. ‘Must have been the propane gas,' Carl concluded and Morgan nodded.

Just before five o'clock, my mind numb, I followed them outside. As we headed across the farmyard to let the cows into the barn, Dad drove up. He climbed out of the truck. He looked hollow, older. He stumbled by us as we stood waiting for news.

‘Dad?' Morgan called after him, his voice gentle but insistent.

Our father stopped and turned slowly. He looked at us with vacant eyes, as if dimly aware of our presence.

‘They're taking him to the airport by ambulance, then air-lifting him to Vancouver,' he said, his voice oddly flat. ‘They've done everything they can for him here. Your mother's going with him,' he added, then headed into the barn.

The police investigation lasted all of two days. At first, the police, like my father, suspected the fire was deliberately set, but there was no proof. The same two RCMP officers, who had spoken to Mom and Boyer about River, showed up a week later with the final report. I stood slumped behind the bathroom door with a molten lump of guilt lodged in my throat and listened to them report to my silent father that the fire had started somewhere at the front of the cabin from ‘unknown causes'.

 

Mom was gone for two weeks. It would be another five months before Boyer came home. River's mother and grandfather came and went. They took away what was left of their son, and grandson, in a pine box. There was nothing else to take. I knew if my mother had been there, if Boyer had been there, they would have found the right words of comfort to share. I tried. I took his mother over to the dairy and showed her where River had lived. I told her about his time here with us, about his words of love for them in the burned journals; they deserved at least that as Boyer said. But in the end they went away with only their sorrow.

And through it all, our daily routine continued. There were times when I heard Morgan and Carl curse the farm and its never-ending chores, but it was that necessary routine that kept them moving during those months.

While Boyer fought to recover, enduring the endless skin grafts
and surgeries in the Vancouver Burn Unit, we went through our days like shell-shocked survivors. And the gossip went on. Rumours about River and Boyer turned into outright lies. We received a poorly-written letter, condemning Boyer for trying to commit suicide over the death of his lover by setting himself on fire. ‘Like those damned Budda monks protesting the Vietnam War that draft dodger was too yellow to fight in,' one of them read.

Lewd suggestions about Morgan and Carl's relationship were uttered on the phone too. They stopped going out in the evenings and the few friends who tried to come back were sent away. My brothers wanted nothing to do with town now, only going into Atwood when necessary to pick up the mail or groceries.

I went to the high school and cleaned out both Carl's and my locker. I was finished with school for the year. Carl was finished with it forever. It was just as well he refused to go back. At least he did not have to see the ugly words scratched into the green paint on the metal doors of both our lockers.

By the end of the month almost one half of Dad's customers had cancelled deliveries.

That summer, a summer I had looked forward to with such foolish romantic anticipation, dragged on, a monotonous heat-filled season. Something more than Boyer was missing from our family. We each moved through our days in solitary worlds. Our connectedness, the glue that had held us together, had vanished. Stilted conversations, either about the business of the farm, or of Boyer's progress, became our method of communication.

While Mom was in Vancouver, we fell into the habit of eating only when we were hungry, each of us grabbing leftovers from the picked-at meals I prepared each day. Grazing, Mom called it when she came home and put a stop to it. She insisted we all sit down at
mealtimes. ‘We need to get back to normal,' she said. But we never would.

Our family became isolated. Except for a few old friends, we were shunned. The only guest who ever joined our table during those days was Father Mackenzie. And starting in October, Ruth.

Ruth was one of the girls from Our Lady of Compassion. She would become the last resident there before the home closed down. Morgan and Carl began keeping company with her after Morgan bumped into her in front of the post office, almost knocking her to the granite steps, as he rushed out one afternoon.

Tall and willowy, it was hard to tell that she was an expectant mother, except for a small bulge under her blue smock. Morgan walked her back up the hospital hill that day and their friendship began. Both he and Carl escorted her to the Roxy Theatre every week. Then they began to bring her home for dinner. It wasn't long before everyone in our family was drawn to the dark-haired girl from Queen Charlotte Island. I suppose she gave us something to focus on outside of our own miseries. We were all aware of her sadness for carrying a child she would not be allowed to keep. Still, she charmed us all with her quiet acceptance of life. Even I, who had become so guarded, began to look forward to her visits.

Back at school after the summer vacation I ignored the huddled groups watching as I walked the hallways. The looks of pity cast my way were as hard to take as the whispered gossip that reached my ears. I pretended not to see, not to hear. I pretended I wasn't there and hid behind shapeless sweatshirts and baggy pants.

When I wasn't in school, or with Dad on his dwindling milk round, my existence was limited to the house and the dairy. In the hours in between, I slept. I slept and I ate. While the rest of my family lost their appetites, I took comfort in food.

Some weekend mornings Dad insisted I come along with him on the milk run. He certainly didn't need me, and I suspected it was just to get me out, but I couldn't refuse him. Each time we approached Colbur Street I felt myself start to hyperventilate.

I knew that sometime during the summer Elizabeth-Ann and her mother had left town. Ma Cooper graced us with the latest gossip.

‘Seems the mayor's wife and daughter ran off on him,' she told Mom. ‘He came home from work one night and found the house emptied. Don't know how she got a moving van in and out of there without him knowing about it. Everyone else did.'

And even though Ma Cooper reported that Mr Ryan had disappeared shortly after I couldn't shake the panic that rose up every time we drove by the empty house.

She stood by us, Ma did, and so did the Widow and Jake. They weren't the only ones who refused to turn their back on us during those months. There were the fine ladies from the church.

The delegation of three showed up on our porch that fall. I was finishing the breakfast dishes at the sink when I heard the knock on the screen door. No one, except salesmen and strangers, ever knocked at our door. Everyone else just came in.

Mom glanced up from the enormous ball of dough she was kneading to see the three women standing out on the porch. They looked like triplets dressed up in their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. Identical pillbox hats sat on their heads; purses hung primly from folded arms.

‘Well, well, to what do I owe this honour?' Mom asked. She wiped her hands on her apron as she glared at them through the screen. I was surprised when she didn't open the door and invite them in. Perhaps she recognized the Christian determination to grant redemption in their eyes.

‘Hello, Nettie,' Mrs Woods said, ignoring Mom's sarcastic tone.

Gertrude Woods was the president of the women's auxiliary. I was sure she must have been missing Mom's active participation in the good deeds of that benevolent group.

‘We have had a meeting,' she said, her voice smooth. ‘And we have decided that Boyer–well, Boyer was surely led astray by that American fellow–that heathen draft-dodger. We agreed that God has punished Boyer enough for his unholy acts and that he is surely repentant.'

‘You did, did you?' Mom said and folded her arms across her chest.

‘We felt it was our Christian duty to come here today,' Mrs Woods went on. ‘We have come to offer our support to you and your family. To see if there is anything we can do to help in your time of need.'

The hum from the refrigerator droned on while Mom stood unmoving. ‘Why yes,' she finally said, ‘there is something you can do.' Her eyes narrowed. ‘You can get the hell off of my porch.'

Hell was not much of a swear word even then, but it was one of a very few I'd ever heard come from my mother's mouth. The shocked gasps that followed were not only from the three crows perched on our porch. The same gasp came from me.

‘Now, Nettie,' Mrs Woods sniffed. ‘We know that it's the sorrow talking, and we have no doubt that God will forgive you.'

‘The question is,' Mom said, ‘will He forgive you?' She calmly pushed the door closed and went back to her bread dough. ‘That's not the church talking,' she said to me, ‘that's just those old biddies brewing up trouble.'

I was not sure if Mom was trying to convince me, or herself.

‘This town is like a flock of your baby chicks,' I heard Ma Cooper say to her later. ‘All fluff and innocence until they detect some weakness. Just let them spot a speck of blood, then watch them turn on one of their own, and peck it to death.'

But in October, after Morgan started keeping company with Ruth, Ma Cooper could not keep her mouth shut.

‘It's none of my business, Nettie,' she said, ‘but you have enough troubles in this family without Morgan parading around town with a pregnant girl, and an Indian at that.'

‘She's Haida,' Mom corrected her.

Ruth's mother was part Haida from the Haida Nations Indian Band on Queen Charlotte Island. Her father was a commercial fisherman there. It was her strict Irish Catholic father, Ruth told Mom, who had sent her away to have her baby when she got into trouble.

‘You're right, Ma,' Mom said in her no-nonsense voice. ‘It
is
none of your business. And if Morgan and this young lady,' she continued, ‘find comfort in each other's company, I'm happy for them. And I'm not interested in the foolishness of wagging tongues.

‘This town should be ashamed,' Mom added sadly. ‘The people here have been tested and failed. It's obvious that there's no tolerance for anything different.'

I will say for Ma Cooper though, that when she saw how strongly Mom felt, she held her counsel and stood by us once again. And even Ma, after she came to know her, fell in love with Ruth.

Beautiful Ruth with the sparking dark eyes and shy smile. She became the lifeline to our floundering family. And on the day when Boyer finally returned, it was only Ruth who could look into his face without flinching, without shock, without fighting back tears.

Snowflakes drifted down from the grey sky on the late November day Boyer came home. We had all been warned about the scars that were still healing but, except for Mom, I don't think any of us was truly prepared.

I stood trembling behind the porch window and watched as Mom and Dad climbed out of the car. Mom opened the back door
and leaned down to help Boyer. As he carefully stepped out then straightened up, I saw the patches of pinto-like skin creeping up the side of his neck. I breathed a sigh of relief. Then he turned.

I gripped the window ledge as the devastation on the other side of his face was revealed. His face! It was as if the whole left side had melted. Somewhere under the angry red scar tissue was where his ear, his cheek and the left side of his mouth had once been.

As Mom slowly led him up the path to the porch, I fled into the kitchen. I tried to look past the scars, tried to find Boyer in the eyes, when he finally came through the door. There was nothing there. He looked back at me for less than a heartbeat and then through me, beyond me. It was as if I had disintegrated, as if I didn't exist. I slunk back into the corner as he passed.

I don't know how long it would have taken my brothers to speak if Ruth hadn't stepped up and held her hand out to Boyer. ‘I'm so happy to meet you,' she said in her gentle voice. ‘I'm Ruth.'

We had all been warned that Boyer was still having trouble speaking because of the tracheotomy performed on his smoke-damaged throat. And even though it was healed, Mom said it was still painful for him to talk. He slowly raised his hand. Ruth took it and held it cupped gently in both of hers.

Morgan and Carl, usually so quick with words, stood there gaping, as if they'd lost their voices. Finally Morgan found his. ‘Hey. Welcome home. Have we missed you!'

Boyer nodded to them and then walked through the parlour into the sunroom.

Mom said he was still in shock, still needed time to heal, that it was normal for burn victims to retreat inward, to feel anger. I don't remember who she said that to or why, but it wasn't to me.

For the next few months, Boyer slept out in the sunroom. The
stairs were too difficult for his stiff, recovering body. He healed in private, keeping his scars and his pain to himself.