Bone Coulee (20 page)

Sunlight covers the grass of the coulee floor, and it covers the yellowed leaves of chokecherry bushes. These trees hog the sun away from the narrow draws and crevices of the reclining hillsides. Mac senses the musk in the contours of the breaks and rises of the banks. They undulate to the horizon. Then up towards the horizon he sees her as a living part of the hills; the hazy flow of a woman’s body, reclined for her rightful share of the sun, a body Shevchenko would see were he here.

“Yes,” Angela says, “My family was chased out. It wasn’t right then, and it still isn’t right. That is why there are land claims.”

“So we’re finally down to business,” Mac says. “No more wine?” Angela shakes her head, so he pours what’s left into his cup, then drains it all in one swallow.

“Remember that day when you saw Mother and I out here? I said that I know of some matters we could talk about.”

“As far as Bone Coulee is concerned, I want the place protected. I’m willing it to my grandson, with the provision that he keep it in its natural state.”

Whether or not Angela would have confronted Mac with the question of her uncle’s death doesn’t come up, because before she can say anything four men climb out of an automobile at the top of the buffalo jump. One of them scans the coulee with binoculars. Another throws a rock down the jump, and three white-tailed deer break from cover and run up a narrow ravine on the west side. Angela gathers up the Styrofoam, and the empty bottle, along with the Tupperware and plastic wrap.

“Maybe we should go.”

“It’s just Pete and the rest of those fools,” Mac says. “I don’t think they’d recognize us from way up there.”

“Binoculars?”

“And so what if they do? I can just tell them to just mind their own business.”

Angela takes out her sketch pad and starts drawing; four stick men all arms and legs upside down, like buffalo falling over the jump. Four heads split like pumpkins dropped on rocks. She flips the page and is about to start on another of a man wielding a fence post, but Mac’s voice draws her away.

“Look up there,” he says. Jets of black smoke spout into the air. They hear the sound of a diesel engine. “I didn’t think they’d work on Sunday.”

“I think we should go now,” Angela says. “I don’t like leaving Mother alone for too long, unless I have to.”

“Here,” Mac says. “I’ll carry the basket.” He holds it open while Angela shakes the blanket.

“And let’s not forget your shovel,” Angela says. “We left it by the trees.”

When Angela gets home, her mother is waiting for her.

“You didn’t ask about Thomas? You did nothing? You made all that fruit salad for nothing? Next time I will go on the picnic.” Roseanna wheels back and forth between her dresser and her suitcase on the bed.

“What are you doing, Mother?”

“Packing. What does it look like?”

“Where are you going?”

“Glen is coming to get me for Charlotte’s drama class. They are writing their own play, and she wants me to talk to her kids. They want ideas to come up with topics. Finally I have a plan, Angela. Finally, a plan!”

•
Chapter 22
•

I
f Mac and his friends had any idea of Roseanna’s
plan, they’d have good reason to worry. But just the fact that she’s here living in Duncan is enough to raise Pete’s suspicions.

They troop down Mac’s basement stairs for their regular Monday morning game of pool. Nick racks the balls, and Sid breaks. Mac never tires of hearing the
clack
on the strike of the cue ball exploding the triangle of numbered balls in all directions. Abner circles the table, cue in one hand shaking, his other hand shaking in his pocket for his pea, checking yet another time for its number, shaking it back into his pocket, and then eyeballing the t
able to locate his numbered ball. He steadies all he can to aim his cue. For all the Mondays over the years, as many times as his cue has lurched forward beyond his control, he’s never ripped the cloth.

“Out for a picnic yesterday?” Pete asks Mac.

“You keeping track?”

“Somebody has to. I don’t like it, Mac.”

“That buffalo skull Mac bought at the sale,” Abner says. “They took it out and buried it.”

“Keep your nose on your cue ball,” Mac says.

“Just what are they up to?” Pete says. “You know as well as I do how a young trick like that can take advantage of a man. And what’s the old lady hanging around town for?”

Abner shoots, his cue just glancing off the side of the cue ball and gouging into the cloth.

“Not enough chalk on the tip,” he says. “Or else your chalk is no good. A little glue should fix up that bit of a rip.”

“If you’d keep your nose glued to your own business,” Mac says.

“I don’t like it,” Pete says. “They’ve got lawyers dragging up all kinds of bogus charges, and there’s no limit to how far back they go.”

“Statute of limitations,” Jeepers says.

“Now this Smythe-Crothers dame. She gets wind of it, we’re in trouble. Real trouble.”

“Remember,” Sid says, “We don’t know what happened. The court record will prove that if the story ever does happen to surface. It was dark and everybody was drunk. Everybody clubbing everybody else.”

“The game,” Mac says. “It’s your shot, Pete. We are down here to play pool, not hold court. No one’s going to jail.”

“Not me,” Jeepers says.

“Look,” Mac says. “There has been no mention of anything.”

“Just what were you doing with her down there?” Pete asks.

“Like Abner said, burying a buffalo skull.”

“Sounds like a fun time,” Nick says.

“I still don’t like it,” Pete says. “This morning I saw the old lady heading out of town with her son, the guy who’s trying to negotiate land deals.”

“I don’t know,” Sid says. “He seems decent enough.”

“I didn’t club anybody,” Jeepers says. “I didn’t even pick up a fence post.”

•
Chapter 23
•

W
hile the pool players fret in Mac’s basement,
Angela is on her way to the Three Crows First Nation. Glen phoned to say that their mother’s plan has Charlotte in a dilemma, and she needs some expert help. One university class in
creative drama doesn’t make Angela much of an expert, but at least she can help to instill some common sense in her mother.
White Ballplayers Murder Indian Home-run Hitter
might not be the most
appropriate title to enter into a high-school theatre festival.

The brand-new Three Crows School is an orange-coloured brick building with two white designer stripes. It has a tall centre cone with skylights and three smaller cones like tipis. Angela walks along red tiles patterned in converging circles on her way to the gymnasium and Charlotte’s drama class.

Her students are sitting in a circle on the gym floor.

“Your mother’s unpredictable,” Charlotte says. “I told her about the Métis story we’ve been working on all month, and she told us about your kokum’s willow spoon stirring soup the night your uncle was killed.”

“Hi, Auntie!” River says from where she’s sitting in the circle. “I’m
playing Kokum Anne-Marie when she was only eight years old.”

“Where is your Kokum Roseanna?”

“Having a nap, I think,” River says. “Is Kokum at home, Mom?”

“Yes, she’s having a nap. She might be over later.”

Angela’s beginning to wonder why she had to reschedule her willow-craft class to come all this way. Charlotte seems to have everything under control. But since she’s here, she should at least try to make the trip worthwhile.

“You’re going to show me some scenes?”

“See what you think,” Charlotte says. “Places, everyone.”

The gym lights dim, and then slowly the stage lights rise to the early morning chirping of birds. A solitary black box sits at centre stage. Five actors appear, one of them, River, who wipes sleep from her eyes. Two of the players mime riding on horseback, while River and the other two get seated on the box. Charlotte’s son, Tommy, mimes the cracking of a whip, and he holds his hands forward as if hanging onto reins.

“It was better before the railway came,” Tommy says. “We made a decent living hauling freight with our Red River carts. Before the fighting at Batoche we lived well at Round Prairie.”

“Papa,” River says, “yesterday you told the border man that we are French.”

“After the English hanged our Louis Riel, we are better off to be French than to be Métis.”

“Can we be Cree? Like Mama?”

“Better to be Indian than Métis,” Tommy says.

The two on horseback move across the stage and return.

“We have to cross the water, Papa,” one of them says.

Charlotte raises both her hands. “Okay,” she says. “Break, but be ready to start again.”

“They’re really good!” Angela says.

“But here’s where we don’t know what to do. We can’t very well use Glen’s cart and have them take the wheels off to make it look like they’re floating across a river.”

“What if you change the box?” Angela says. “Make it higher than it is wide.”

“The Red River carts were quite high.”

“Then, when you want to remove the wheels, have the boys mime that, and in the process turn the box on its side. Now it’s lower, so it looks as if the wheels are off.”

“And the family rafts across the river, right?” Charlotte says. “The boys can mime paddles. What about the horses? The boys were riding horses. Do they swim across?”

“Have the boys mime that too,” Angela says. “Have them tie the horses’ reins to the raft. I think that’s what the Métis carters must have done. Anyway, we can ask the Elders.”

“That should work,” Charlotte says. “Okay, everybody. Back on. Let’s do the coulee scene.”

The lights dim to dusk. The actors again mime the cart’s movement across the prairie. The riders go forth again, this time separately, and they return separately.

“A deep coulee ahead of us,” the first one says. “Too steep to get down.”

The second rider appears. “Follow me,” he says. “We can enter the valley from the south end.”

Coyotes yip, ravens croak, crows caw. A cougar screams, and Papa and the boys mime the settling down of the spooked horses. By now the cart is in the coulee.

“Many have camped here,” Mama says from the back of the cart. “There are many tipi rings.”

“And many buffalo bones,” Papa says. “We will build a cabin and live right here.”

Roseanna wheels into the gym, and she shouts as loudly as her weakened lungs will allow: “I thought of just the thing! We can paint the killers’ faces white, and have them beat on Thomas with baseball bats!”

•
Chapter 24
•

R
oseanna doesn’t get her way. The official opening
of the Dream catcher Boutique is on the same day as Esther’s
son’s funeral, so Angela’s too concerned with this conflict to be haggling with her mother over a school play. Rather than brood over this, Roseanna fries bannock. Sprinkles it with crystals of sugar and places several pieces in one of Angela’s baskets with paper towel
and a jar of saskatoon jam, takes it across the lane to Esther’s.

Mac Chorniak is already there with a carton of Tim Horton’s donuts and a box of McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets for Esther’s dog. He’d been to Saskatoon the day before to buy a pair of dress shoes. He talks, but Roseanna sits and listens, just as if she isn’t there.

“The plane trip went okay?” Mac asks.

“Cameron’s friends met me at the airport. They were nice to me, Mac. Real gentlemen.”

“You’re glad you went?”

“To be with my son when he died. That’s hard, Mac. I wasn’t at all sure that I could hold up. I don’t know what I would have done were it not for his friends. The business with the crematorium, and getting me back to the airport.”

“I can well imagine it wasn’t easy.”

“The funeral won’t interfere with the grand opening of Darlene’s shop, will it? That’s this morning, and the funeral’s not till two this afternoon.”

“Not at all,” Mac says.

“I have something to ask of you, Mac. If you don’t mind.”

The look in Esther’s eyes tells him what’s coming. He was afraid of this; he wouldn’t mind doing anything else…ushering, handing out funeral cards, pallbearing, even sitting up all night for an old-fashioned wake, like he remembers when his grandfather died. But it’s none of these that Esther wants.

“Would you mind saying a few words? You brought me such comfort at Bill’s funeral.”

How can Mac refuse? But this eulogy won’t be nearly as easy as the one he did for Bill. For Bill’s funeral, Mac had no end of stories to draw from. They had grown up together. Hunted and fished together. Borrowed tools and equipment from each other. Sat on boards together. But there is not much he knows about Cameron. Mac does know what people will have on their minds at the funeral.

“I can do it, Esther.”