Medicine Walk (22 page)

“What?” he asked.

“Good to see ya chow down is all,” Bunky said. “Good day’s sweat’ll do that fer a guy.”

“He’s doing a great job,” she said.

“You seen?” Bunky asked.

“I walked his lunch out to him.”

The older man nodded and set his fork down beside his plate. “That ground hard enough for ya?”

He chewed and looked at them. He took a swallow of the wine and set the glass down gently on the table. “Like tryin’ to poke through a mountain face,” he said.

“I hear that,” Bunky said. “Why you figure I hired it out?” He laughed.

“Coulda got you one of them post-hole diggers that run off the tractor.”

“That’s not how man’s work gets done.”

“Easy to say when you ain’t the man doin’ it.”

They laughed. She poured him a little dollop of wine and he looked at her but her face remained neutral, not meeting his eyes and looking at the tabletop. They ate in silence. She ate in small bites, chewing thoughtfully, and it made him slow and set his fork beside his plate between bites. He finished off the wine and she rose and got him a second plate of food.
Bunky eased his chair back from the table and set to preparing a pipe. She looked back and forth at the two of them and he felt awkward so he concentrated on the food and long moments passed without any word said. When he finished he wiped his mouth with his sleeve and pushed his chair back and stood as if to go.

“Appreciate if you’d tell me where I’m to sleep,” he said.

“Ain’t no mad rush,” Bunky said. “I aim to smoke this bowl an’ hear a story.”

“Story?”

“Angie’s a whale of a storyteller. We sit by the fire an’ she’ll tell ’em after we eat. A pipe goes good with a story.”

He stared at the floor. “I ain’t really much for it,” he said.

“Frig, it’ll do ya good to sit a while.”

“Stories work to calm you down,” she said quietly.

He looked at her but she kept her gaze on the tabletop. She stood and gathered the plates and took them to the sink and set them there to soak. Then she walked over and took Bunky’s hand and he stood and they went into the living room, and he followed them and took a seat on the floor with his back to the front of an armchair. Bunky sat on the couch. She took a rocker from the corner and set it to the side of the fire and settled herself. He couldn’t stop watching her. She closed her eyes. He glanced at Bunky, and the older man was entranced by her too. His pipe sat in his hand unlit and only when she opened her eyes and looked about did he strike a match and puff it alive. He felt the need of a smoke too and he fumbled out his makings but she reached a package over. “Stories go better with tailor-mades,” she said.

He let his fingers trail on hers a second, feeling the electric thrill of it. She smiled. “What’s this tale to be then?” she asked.

“I favour a story about the sea,” Bunky said. “Never been out to sea. I seen it once though. Kinda always liked the feel of it.”

“What are ya talkin’ about?” he asked.

Bunky leaned forward on the sofa. “She’s a tale spinner,” he said. “She spins ’em right outta the air. Tells ’em whole so’s you’d think yer readin’ a book. You’ll see. Flummoxed me the first time she did it.”

“You make ’em up?” he asked.

“It feels like they were always in me,” she said. “I just reach in and find them and they tend to tell themselves.”

She sat back in the rocker and folded her hands under her chin and looked upward and away to the far corner of the room. The two of them watched her and the flicker of the firelight on her face lent it a wavering cast as if she were a shaman or a spell-caster. When she closed her eyes he could feel her go somewhere like stepping through a curtain. He was captivated before she said a word. The unlit cigarette dangled from his fingers and he let it drop to the floor and he crossed his knees and listened.

She told a tale of a being from the sea who lived in the great underwater world. This being yearned to see the colours and hear the sounds of the world above her. But she couldn’t figure out how to get there. She tried many ways. Finally she latched on to the tail of a passing whale. When the huge creature breached the waters and then dove lazily back into the depths, the being clung to the tail and let the mystery of the great world above fill her senses. She was dazzled. She let go of the tail and drifted on the crests of waves, looking out across the blue ocean of the sky and feeling the wind on her face and the taste of the breeze. She landed on the beach of a tiny island. She walked there in the thrall of a whole other
experience until she longed for her home in the underwater world. But she had to find a way to get back. She swam out and waited for another whale. None came. She became sad and lonely and filled with dread that she might never return to her home. The salt of her tears merged with the salt of the sea and a dolphin came to comfort her. She found she could speak to it and told the dolphin of her journey. The dolphin carried her back down to her home beneath the waves. The being was overjoyed. The dolphin left her with the message that since she had already experienced the air world she could always return there in her mind. The being lived for the rest of her life telling tales about the world above to all who would listen.

The roll of her words rode on the flicker of the fire. Words in firelight taking him back. As the tale wound down to its ending, he didn’t know that he was crying until she stopped. He stood shakily and wiped at his face with his palm. They looked at him and Bunky stood and put a hand on his shoulder. Neither of them spoke. He was embarrassed now and he stepped back and scratched his head.

“Told ya it was somethin’,” Bunky said.

“Where do I sleep?” he asked.

“There’s a bed in the loft of the barn,” Bunky said. “I could walk ya.”

“I’ll find it.”

“Sure?”

“Yeah.”

He turned to go. When he looked back over his shoulder she sat in the rocker with her hands on her thighs, gazing at him. She watched him without speaking and he stepped through the kitchen and out the door and across the yard toward the barn. He found his way to the loft and lay in the
bed and pulled the blanket and comforter around him and stared at the beams and timbers. He thought of her eyes in the firelight. The sheen of them something he recognized. He sought a word for it but was asleep before he found it.

The ground was unrelenting. He pushed himself hard. But the morning only earned him ten more post holes and he was worn and spent by the time she arrived with his lunch. He drank the soup and smoked before he could gather himself enough to eat the sandwiches. There was no flask. He appreciated that. They sat on the running board of the tractor while he ate. The sky was the blue of old denim. There was the smell of clover and muck from the recent rains and he chewed and took secretive glances at her. She had a way of brushing her hair back from her face with one hand, slowly, using the tips of her fingers, closing her eyes briefly, and he was entranced by that. The sheer pleasure she took in it.

“My dad was a working man,” she said.

“Kind?”

“Everything. He always said he liked the feel of the earth on his hands. So he did outside work mostly.”

“Sounds like a good man.”

“He died when I was twelve. Heart attack. Pretty much worked himself to death.”

“He was Cree?”

“White. My mom was Cree.”

“She’s gone too.”

She looked at him. He could feel her searching for words. “She left me slowly. Almost like one little bit of her at a time. She kinda gave up when Dad died. I remember that. How she
looked. How she slumped when she walked as though there was a weight on her back.

“She had no skills and she had trouble finding work. Dad was the breadwinner. So it was hard for her. She drank and she’d find men and bring them home. I must have had a dozen stepdads. None of them lasted very long. They would always leave her. Just vanish. No words, nothing, and she’d be heartbroken.

“I’d see her standing in the doorway with this look on her face that was all barren and cold like a field of snow. I could feel her struggling to find something to latch on to. It would just end up being another man and another heartbreak. When I was sixteen she just quit. I found her curled up with her arms around a pillow the day after the latest one of them checked out. She just left. Alone and sad.”

There was a hawk hovering in the wash of a thermal draft and they watched it. He wanted to offer something and he wrestled with words. It made his gut churn. He found nothing that seemed to fit. “Rough,” was all he said in the end.

“I swore I’d never do that,” she said. “Never rely totally on a man. So I went to work. I cooked good so I went to camps and crew sites everywhere. Word got out that I ran a good kitchen and I was never out of a job.”

“They hassle ya?” he asked. “The guys?”

“They always want something, men. They’ll always try to snag a girl. Like it’s their right or their duty or something. That’s just the way men are. I partied with them but I never let myself get involved with the crew.”

“Ever?”

“There were men, yeah. I mean, I’m a woman. But never anyone from the work. When you work around men all the time you find things out.”

He looked over at her.

“Like they want to own you until something jars them, something you do that’s less than their idea of perfect or that shines less of a light on them. Then it’s like you can watch them remove themselves like a wave going back out. Just kinda gone. It’s what always happened with my mom. Washed away.”

“And Bunky?”

She smiled. “Bunky’s a hero, you know? He’s soft and gentle but he’s got sand and grit in him too. You saw.”

“Yeah.”

She fished out her smokes and held out the pack to him and he took one. They sat and smoked quietly. “What about you?” she asked. “Family? Women? Anything.”

He smoked until the butt was down to his fingers and then he ground it out on the running board. He leaned forward on his knees and folded his hands between them and kicked at a clod and ground it with the toe of his boot. “Nothin’ much to say,” he said.

He turned to her and she watched him closely. “You draw circles in the sand with a stick,” she said.

“Huh?”

“You know. Like a kid. Watching you, you’re like a kid with a stick making circles in the sand because you don’t know how to shape words yet.”

“Meaning?”

“It means I get it.”

“Good, because I don’t.”

“I get that some stories are hard to tell. Like when you heard my story, it took you back to something. To someone, maybe. Back to a story you been carrying a long time.”

“Some stories never need tellin’.”

She put an arm around his shoulders and put her head against his. He could hear her breathing but all he could do was sit there like stone, his eyes on the ground. They sat like that for minutes and then finally she stretched her legs out in front of her and crossed her ankles. She tapped the sides of her boots together. When he looked at her she had her lips pursed and she looked at him, squinting. “You got it in you to be a hero too,” she said.

“I ain’t cut from that cloth.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

She rose and brushed off the legs of her pants and when he stood too they were about a foot apart. She looked right into his eyes and he put his head down and shifted his feet in the grass. She raised his chin with one hand. “No one ever knows,” she said. “Life asks it all of a sudden when you’re not looking.”

She stood up on her toes and kissed him. It was cool and damp. It was over in an instant and he stood there with his arms hanging at his sides. She stepped back, then bent to grab up the remainder of the lunch and turned and walked away. He stood watching her make her way across the field. At one point he raised a hand as if to wave then dropped it to his forehead, his mouth open in wonder.

That night as he lay in the loft he could see the edge of the moon through the slats of the barn. It hung in indigo and cast a swath of bluish light across the bed. There was the smell of cattle. The rich, dry odour of oats, straw, and hay curing in the mow. The soft feet of mice in the corners. There was a sound
at the ladder. He raised his head off the rough pillow and saw her climb to the top rung and step onto the loft. She wore a white nightdress. She walked silently toward him so that she appeared to hover and he caught his breath. She got to the edge of the cot and he closed his eyes. He could feel her watching him. He flicked his eyes open and she sat on the edge of the thin mattress and found his hand in the dark and held it between the two of hers. Neither of them spoke. She held his hand then opened hers and kept his in her one palm and stroked the back of it with her fingers. He couldn’t take a full breath and he felt heavy, unable to move. She took her free hand and put it to her lips then laid it against his cheek. He closed his eyes again and tried to pull the satin of it into him and he could feel her move. When he opened his eyes she was leaned close to him, the wisp of her breathing on his face. He reached a hand up toward her but she brushed it aside and held her position. Her breath was dry: faint cinnamon lingering against a backdrop of wine. He lay with his arms held to his sides, staring straight into the shimmering orb of her eyes. They didn’t speak. Instead, she continued to hold a hand to his face. He put his hands to her hips and she let him. He searched for words but there were none in him. The tumble of her hair was like a curtain framing them. The womanly smell of her, all musk and soap and smoke. The sound of cattle rustling in their stalls and somewhere far off the yip of a solitary coyote chasing voles through the field grass. She stood slowly, his hands falling away from her body like a shedding skin, and she stood looking down at him and when he tried to speak she leaned over and put a finger to his lips and hushed him. He grabbed her wrist. They eyed each other and when he pulled her to him she didn’t resist, let her body settle against his, and he kissed her and she kissed back,
his hands on her shoulders, hers at both sides of his waist. Neither of them moved. When she stood again his palms felt the emptiness of the space between them.