Bone Coulee (25 page)

“And lock the door on your way out. In case Abner wants to come over.”

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Chapter 28
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Bone Coulee Extravaganza

The Duncan Rodeo Committee has informed the Eagle that it expects the biggest crowd ever. This weekend will have something for everybody: rodeo, Christian cowboy worship service on Sunday, and a Saturday night light show, music fest, and ultramodern dance performance that rates with the magic of Disney World. Look under Fridge Notes for a schedule of events.

(The Bad Hills Eagle)

T
he pens and bucking chutes are at the north end
of the arena, as are the bulls, bull riders and cowboys in general. There’s also the rodeo clown, who Glen says is the best athlete of the bunch. Glen’s brought Charlotte and the children, Tommy and River, along with Angela, and they are seated on the hillside just above the judge’s stand. Roseanna refused to come. “Too much dust,” she said. Angela notices Mac standing between the announcer and one of the judges.

The first three bull riders don’t make the eight seconds, and the fourth bull staggers out of the chute and lies down. Glen figures its flank strap is cinched too tight.

Garth drew Tom Tom, who holds the second highest rank in this year’s circuit, and the way he’s snorting and bouncing and kicking in the confines of the chute, it’s not hard to see why. Garth stands at the top of the chute, preparing for his ride. He lowers his new bull rope that he ordered from El Paso, Texas; polypropylene braid with a leather handhold. It cost him two hundred and fifty dollars, and he thinks it’s worth every cent, if not more. He reaches down with a wire hook and snares the end of the rope, bringing it up and around so that it circles the bull’s chest. He rubs rosin on the handle, and on the palm of his skin-tight kid-leather glove. He seats himself down on the fidgety bull, and Garth knows that Tom Tom is about ready to explode.

The cowboy manning the chute tugs on the rope, snugging it up tighter and tighter around Tom Tom’s chest. Garth works his sticky glove into the sticky handle, lays the tail-end of the rope across his palm twice and back and rubs in more rosin. Then he presses down on his gloved fingers, closing his fist, practically glued shut on the handle and rope, but leaving the tail end to dangle free.

Garth knows it’s a trade-off. He’s got to keep the bull rope tight if he wants to stay on the full eight seconds. But the more he sees to that, the greater is his risk of getting his glove hand caught. With his free hand he shoves down on his hat, then waves, and the chute cowboy clanks the gate open.

He’s hardly out and Tom Tom’s into a spin so tight it seems he wants to scrape Garth off on the railings. Around they go, but Garth stays poised, free hand raised high, his body in rhythm with the bull. Five times around and then, without a pause, five times the other way. The clown moves in, waving his red flag. He tries to get the bull’s attention to draw him away from the chute.

Tom Tom swings into a belly roll, all four of his feet off the ground, and he kicks out to the side, twisting and rolling, and then he’s back into the spins. Then his head is down, his back end up and kicking. The buzzer sounds; the eight seconds are up, but before Garth can grab the flopping tail end of the bull rope Tom Tom lunges head down, and in a flash he breaks into his killer move; the back of his bony head whips up, for Garth’s head to whip down. If they collide, Garth’s head might just as well be a cantaloupe. But Garth’s alert, and he leans back, as far and stiff as his neck can stretch and hold.

Tom Tom twists one way, then the other, into another belly roll that catches Garth off guard. He’s thrown off the bull’s back, but his hand is caught in the rope.

Garth is like a blanket flapping in a hurricane, Tom Tom running and turning and stomping; Garth’s boots up and down in the dirt, like a helpless puppet’s feet on strings. The clown circles, then darts in to grab the tail end of the bull rope to free Garth’s hand.

But Tom Tom’s worked with clowns before. He spins one way, then twists his head back around the other way, his horns stabbing Garth in the thigh.

A rider tries to move in, but Tom Tom charges at the horse, and at the clown, and at the horse again.

Glen jumps into the arena. He waits until the bull runs by him chasing the clown, who climbs up on the chute. Glen swats Tom Tom on the nose with his hat, then throws it to the clown, who catches it and waves it above his head.

The bull looks up at the clown, and Glen shoots in. He tugs at the tail end of the bull rope to free Garth’s hand, and he keeps running. The clown jumps down from the chute, and he throws Glen’s hat at Tom Tom, who attacks it with his horns. Garth stumbles to the rails, and safety. The rider manages to release the bull’s cinch strap, and Tom Tom stomps the hat just one more time. The clown waves his red flag at him, but Tom Tom just
stands and stares, and then he turns and runs out the open exit gate.

After Garth’s trip
to the Bad Hills hospital, and after the throngs have eaten their barbequed beef supper, the night is ready for the big show. The sky is black, but a spotlight catches a horseman on the high west ridge of the coulee. He carries a torch. A hush envelopes the audience; the hundreds on the hillside and on
the bleachers. Mac sits with the VIPs on the judges’ stand. He didn’t
have to speak, but he was compelled to stand when the MC called his name.

The bull riders form an honour guard on the floor of the coulee. In their chaps, they swagger like Canada geese on a sandbar, Garth even more so with his wrist in a cast and his limp from thirty-four stitches on his thigh. But still his limp is a walk of triumph. Tom Tom topped out with a perfect fifty points, and the forty-one point performance of Garth’s ride scored him out at ninety-one, the highest score on the circuit.

The spotlight dims to nothing, and all that can be seen is the horseman’s torch on the horizon. The rider dismounts, and the only sound in the coulee is the nighttime flutter of geese on the
stink lake. The cowboy lowers the torch to the ground, and in seconds
a circle of fire blazes on the hillside. The music from
Chariots of Fire
booms from the loudspeakers.

Floodlights show the bull riders mounting horses, racing back and forth along the coulee floor. The amps boom music like the beating of a heart, and the MC announces, “Andrea Menard!”

She swirls across the stage, her voice on fire with songs from her
Velvet Devil
collection. Mac thinks she looks like Angela. Other acts follow: Trooper, The Stampeders, Buffy Sainte-Marie.

A puppet appears from on high in the sky. It looms and dangles like a pagan god, yet more than pagan. The giant puppet strides the coulee like an extraterrestrial overseer. It’s like a tin man, its body a jangled collection of metal sheets that dangle from strings.

Smoke bombs explode. An army of spools on stilts marches around the puppet’s feet. Women dressed in Spandex and wearing starburst helmets thrust their spears back and forth. Hooded men in robes beat on drums. The puppet spreads its arms to look like the wings of an eagle.

In the cold of an October night Garth and Angela huddle together, watching from the hillside. Rockets fire,
zip, zip, zip, zip,
streaking into the sky. They burst in mushroom sprays of diamonds, falling red and green and white and blue. The air fills with the smell of gunpowder and the sounds of
oohs
and
aahs.

“Listen,” Angela says. She hears the strong wings of geese flapping on the water of the marsh. The birds lift, responding to the explosions and the lights. Ten thousand others remain on the dark water, their feathers ruffled, their voices a-jabber to chorus with those in flight.

•
Chapter 29
•

G
len has built Roseanna a ramp, and every morning
she wheels out the back door to feed the owl. It gobbles up moose-meat hamburger as fast as a dog. The owl has been able to hop up on a limb of the maple tree for some time now, and it can flap its wings with no sign of which one had been broken. Roseanna wheels back into the house where Angela is cleaning up the breakfast dishes.

“The owl looks healed to me,” Roseanna says. “Tell Chorniak to come and take it out of here.”

“Mr. Chorniak knows that it is healed,” Angela says. “Garth told me that he’s coming to get it this morning.”

“Garth is coming?”

“No, Mr. Chorniak.”

“How does he know?”

“I saw Garth at the rodeo, and I told him that the wing is healed and that the owl can fly. He said that he’d let his grandpa know.”

“Can’t you tell him yourself to make sure? Phone him. And while you are at it tell him we want to go on a picnic before it snows.”

“He’ll be here. Don’t worry.” Angela takes an election brochure
from the table and puts it in a box of papers to be recycled.

“Are we going to vote this Wednesday?” she asks. “If we want to, we’ll have to be sworn in. I saw at the post office that we’re not on the voters’ list.”

“We can do it when we go to vote.”

“Can we?”

“Why not?”

“Will they let us?”

“They have to. I was poll clerk in Regina Elphinstone. I know the rules.”

“Our vote would count if we could vote in Regina.”

“What does it matter? At least we know where we stand with the Sask Party.”

As much as Roseanna wants to be rid of the owl, she’s beginning to think of it as her collaborator. She knows that the bird was born in the coulee, and she’s convinced herself that it carries the coulee’s spirit. She’s convinced herself that if they can corner Chorniak down there, the spirits will side with them. The spirits will expose him as the intruder that he is, and make him confess to everything.

She thinks the spirits are working already when Mac shows up right after lunch, driving his truck into the backyard. He’s prepared to take the owl out to Bone Coulee.

“But why not just open the cage and let the blame thing fly away?” he asks Angela.

“Ask Mother,”
Angela
says.

“It would stay here,” says Roseanna. “That’s why. It thinks I’m its mother and the tree is home. It doesn’t even have to hunt for its food.”

“So,” Angela suggests, “maybe if it’s back out in the coulee it will adapt to how it’s supposed to live.”

“Things alive,” Mac says, “or things dead like the buffalo skull. You’d think we should all move out there.”

“The duck should go back too,” says Roseanna.

“Have you got an empty cardboard box?” Mac asks Angela. “Something we can put the owl in. And some duct tape?”

“I’ll look in the house,” Angela says.

Mac sits down on one of Angela’s willow-crafted lawn chairs. “Sure is warm for this late in the fall,” he tells Roseanna.

“Indian Summer,
eh?”

“Good picnic weather.”

“I wasn’t feeling too good when you went with Angela. I’m feeling really good now. I’m ready for a picnic before the snow comes. You could bring the duck to put it back.”

“There are enough waterfowl out there as is,” Mac says.

“Not a funny joke,” Roseanna says.

A car door slams, and in a moment they hear the click of Jane Smythe-Crothers’s shoes on the walkway by the side of the house.

“Esther told me that I’d find you here,” she tells Mac. “And Mrs.
Wilkie. You two would make quite a pair for my documentary.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Don’t worry, Mac. But I would like to get your collection on film. Darlene mentioned something about a stone duck that you found.”

“He’s stingy with the duck,” Roseanna says.

Angela steps out of the porch with a cardboard box. She hands it to Mac, at the same time asking Jane, “What brings you to our backyard?” They give each other a hug.

Mac takes the cardboard box into the cage. The owl hops from one branch to another, then soars past his head. It sways on a branch of the maple tree. Mac holds up the open box and shakes the limb, expecting rather foolishly that the bird might fall into it. Instead, the bird swoops, its healthier wing striking the box, and feathers fly. Mac grabs at the owl’s claws, only to get his hands bloodied. He will get his eyes scratched out before he’ll ever get the owl in the box.

Angela opens the cage door, and in the scramble the bird flies out. Mac staggers out of the cage.

“Stupid bird,” Roseanna says.

The owl soars above them, back and forth across the yard, and then it flies off to perch high up on one of Esther Rawling’s maple trees. Esther’s dog scurries back and forth in her yard, yipping in a frenzy as only Esther’s dog can. The owl stares downward, and the dog scratches at the trunk of the tree, never ceasing its chatter. Moments later, the owl unfolds its wings, then sets them close again. Mac collapses on the willow-craft lawn chair, gasping for breath.

•
Chapter 30
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T
ung Yee and Kwok Ming prepare a Chinese tea
ceremony for Jane prior to her going back to Toronto. They invite Abner and Jen, with Tung Yee telling Abner, “But no politics at ceremony.
NDP
lost election. Nothing you can do about it now.”