Season of Storm (35 page)

And another one now, with her father. "That bloody cop,'' said her father, "came around this morning insinuating I'd known about it all along."

"I told you you'd be sorry," was all Smith would say. "You wouldn't listen, would you?"

"All right," said her father. He was thinner; his clothes were a little too big for him, but the heart attack had been minor; he was still powerful. "All right, I saw what I saw on the news last night, and I still don't believe it. I want to hear it from you. You're married, Shulamith?"

"That's right."

"Why?"

"Because I love him. Why else?"

"Then why isn't your husband here with you? Or why aren't you with your husband? And why don't you wear a ring?"

"Because we've agreed to split up."

It took him a moment to get over that one. "What?" he asked incredulously. "Why?"

"Because my husband doesn't love me. He never did." She was trying to remain matter-of-fact, but pain kept seeping back. "If you hadn't made such a bloody noise about everything, we could have divorced quietly, and no one would ever have had to know. But then you've never listened to what I wanted, have you? So why should I be surprised that just to satisfy yourself you had me harassed by the police, the papers and your private detectives? How could I expect my happiness and peace of mind to be important to my father?"

Her anger was a flood, a raging sea, pushing and pounding against the reserve that had held it back for so many years, and fuelled now by the utter heartbreak which his actions had made so much worse. The force of feeling in her frightened her. If she let loose, she thought, its power would be enough to kill her father. But she looked at her father and told herself she didn't care. Let her father look out for himself. She always had—ever since she was eight years old she had been alone and unprotected.

"I don't understand," said her father. "If you were eloping, then who were those men? Who made the call?" He looked shaken, and she realized triumphantly that for perhaps the first time in his life her father was actually doubting himself. He was actually entertaining the possibility that his view of reality might be wrong.

She wished she could have proved him wrong. She wished she could tell him he had hallucinated the men. She looked at her father for a long moment, then got up and left the room. When she returned she held a Bible.

"Do you believe in God, Daddy?" she demanded, and she was trembling now with the need to tell him the truth.

If he was surprised by the question he did not show it. "No," he said.

"Well, I do. I don't know who, and I don't know what, but there is a God. There is a God somewhere."

She held out the Bible to him. "I want you to hold this and swear before my God that you won't tell anybody one word of what I'm going to tell you. If you don't swear, I won't tell you. But if you do swear, if you swear and break your oath, then your lie will come and get you, one way or another. I know it."

He was looking at her as though she was breaking his heart. He put out one and then the other hand to take the book she held out to him. "I swear," said her lather, looking into her eyes, "not to tell anyone what you tell me."

"Do you believe you'll suffer if you break your oath?" she demanded.

He blinked sadly. "Yes," he said, in the gentlest voice she had ever heard him use. "I believe it, Shulamith."

Then she told him.

"There's one thing I don't understand," said her father when she had finished. "You say you love him very much but all he feels for you is a sexual attraction. And you're going to give him up, you're never going to see him again."

"Yes," she said.

"If there's one thing I know about you, Shulamith, it's that you're not a coward. You made a lot of mistakes working for me, but never by backing away from something. You were always my daughter that way."

He sighed and shook his head. "But you're backing away from this. Marriages have been built—and built successfully—on less than what you and your husband have. Why don't you fight this thing of his heritage? Make him love you. A woman can."

She laughed—a high bitter laugh that was more of a punishment to him than anything that had gone before. "You don't understand that, Daddy?'' she asked. "You really don't understand? Well, I'll explain: I've had sixteen years of chasing around after a man, trying to make him love me! I've spent my life up to now trying to make you love me, make you proud of me! And I've had a bellyful of it. I've had enough to last me a lifetime! From now on, men are going to chase
me
! Because now I know I've at least got something to offer! You used to make me think any man who showed an interest in me was only after your money. At least Johnny did me that favour. At least he showed me I'm a woman—a desirable woman!"
 

Her father looked away. "Yes, you are," he said. His voice was hoarse and he cleared his throat. "If you want my opinion the man's in love with you. Either that or he's a complete bastard."

She snorted. "Those are the only two alternatives?"

"A man's a man," said her father, ignoring her sarcasm. "Race doesn't change that, Shulamith. If he put you through all that only to save his own neck, he's a blackguard and doesn't deserve your loyalty or your silence." He raised his hand. "I'm not going to break my word. It will have to be up to you. If he is not a blackguard he has some feeling for you, Shulamith. Something you could make a marriage out of. Don't forget you're
married
to him. There's
your
solemn oath. How will your God feel about you abandoning your oath after a few days without even trying to make it work?"
 

"What do
you
know about it?" she asked.
 

"I know marriage is the greatest happiness there is," he said.

"Then you know it doesn't last, too!" she said cruelly. "Nothing lasts forever, does it! You should know that!" She jumped up to leave, because she knew that had hurt him, and she felt guilty. When she got to the door his voice spoke behind her.

"Two things last forever," he told her quietly. "Love, and regret."

***

On the news that night an RCMP spokeswoman conceded that the kidnapping case was closed. "As far as the extortion is concerned," she said, "we have to assume that someone was aware of Miss St. John's planned absence and used the information for their own ends. But all our avenues of investigation are exhausted, and in view of a lack of cooperation from the principals the file is now no longer active."

"Thank God!" Smith cried. "I'm last week's news!"

She was one of the uncooperative principals. She had made a very brief statement to the reporters who had come around today, but to Staff Sergeant Podborski she had been less forthcoming.

"I told you you were wasting your time," she told him coldly. "Don't expect me to save your bacon now. I don't know who knew, and I don't care. As far as I'm concerned, good luck to them. They should stop all the industrial despoilers and polluters the same way. I am free to say that without being charged with conspiracy, I hope? And free to think it?" Then she had closed the door on him.

"Not wise to get the police angry at you," her father observed.

"No, it isn't, is it?" she agreed. "That's why I do it. Because we're all going to be so wise we're going to end up in a police state!"

"Oh, now," began her father.

"You should be grateful," she said, "that they haven't thought of charging you with laying false information!"

"They have thought of it."

"What?" she laughed. "
What?
"
 

"Your staff sergeant there was wondering if I objected so strongly to my daughter marrying an Indian that I invented the whole thing to put the RCMP on your trail and prevent the wedding."

She laughed again. "What did you say to that?"

Her father looked ashamed. "I told him that if he used his ingenuity sussing out serial killers instead of chasing the innocent, British Columbia might be a safer place to live."

Smith sucked in her breath. "Oh, Daddy," she chided him. If anything would make the police angry, it would be that sort of reference to a case that had brought them such terrible negative publicity. "What would you do if he did lay a charge against you?"

"I'd sue him for malicious prosecution," her father said instantly.

The two of them laughed together for the first time in days. "We'll both end up in jail," Smith said.

"They're not always so unreasonable," her father said suddenly, as though struck with a sudden guilt. "Don't condemn every cop on the actions of Podborski. We had some bad luck with these guys, Shulamith, but there've been times in my life when I was damned glad to see a man with a yellow stripe on his trousers. Hell, you know what lawlessness is like, girl. You've been in a lumber camp."

She was unrepentant. "It's not just us, though, is it? You didn't see Wilf's bruises. You didn't see Johnny's study. Just because they generally treat white men well...it's something that needs looking at, Daddy, you must see that!"

"This is still Canada," he insisted. "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater."

***

Soon after, when the housekeeper arrived and had begun to settle in, Smith drove down to the hospital to visit Wilf.

He had three visitors already in his room, dark-haired men standing around the bed. As she opened the door they looked up at her and then exchanged glances among themselves. They were younger than Johnny, early twenties at most, and except for their dusky bronze skin they didn't resemble him: their faces and noses were broader than his. Yet a chill of something like recognition shivered along her spine as she advanced into the room.

"Hello, Wilf," she said, advancing to the bed as the men shifted away. She set down the potted flowers and the tray of fruit on his table. "Are you feeling any better?"

"Hey Peaceable Woman," he said. He coughed. "Doing fine here, how about you?"

"Well, I'm fine, Wilf! Seeing I still have both ears and ten fingers. Not like you, losing a healthy spleen to the cause."

She turned to the three men, who were staring at her. "Aren't you going to introduce me to the New Provos, Wilf? Isn't this the militant wing of the Chopa Nation I see before me?"

The men began to mutter about leaving. Smith smiled, as if this were a cocktail party and she the hostess. "Of course, we didn't have much chance to get acquainted last time, did we? Shall we make up for it now?" She lifted her hands to her head, pulling her hair back to reveal her ears.

"These are my ears," she said. "You probably haven't seen them closely, but you wanted to mail one to my father." She turned her head side to side to let them see, a fashion model modelling ears.

"And these are my hands," she said, dropping her hair to hold them up. The three men were beginning to look very uncomfortable. "Note the little finger on each one." She displayed them. "You've probably never noticed my little fingers before, but you wanted to cut them off." She looked at her hands. "Of course, I don't play the piano, so it wouldn't have mattered much. What's a finger, after all?"  

She pointed to the bed. "Was it worth it, what happened to Wilf? Did it make you feel like real men? Look at him! Take a good look at your handiwork! Because whatever racist pigs the cops may be, this is
your
handiwork! And I want to know, would it have been worth it? If you'd cut off my ear, would you be happy now?"
 

She couldn't go on; she had no more words.

"I'm sorry, Wilf," she whispered, pulling a tissue from her pocket as she began to cry. He nodded at the three men, and they disappeared out the door. "My God," she said, blowing her nose. "I've been shrieking at people all day. I think I'm going crazy."

"Good," said Wilf approvingly. "In this world you have to go crazy to stay sane."

In the long hot summer that followed she thought of Wilf's words many times. When she woke in the night crying from a nightmare of loss, when she had written a poem that reflected a despair blacker than she had known before, when the world lost its colour before her eyes and she felt in the deepest reaches of her soul that for her it would be grey forever, she would cling to what Wilf had said like a lifeline, and repeat the words over and over until she believed them. She was going crazy, but it was necessary in order to stay sane.

There were other words that she repeated just as often. When the anguish was on her, when her body and her heart screamed that she could not last another minute without Johnny Winterhawk, she would clench her fists and her jaw and repeat the other talisman:

"I am not going to beg for a man's love ever again!"

Thirty-two

In the middle of July, Cimarron recorded 'Wake Me Up to Say Goodbye'. Shulamith sat in on the rehearsals and the recording, and it was more satisfying than anything she had achieved in all her years at St. John's Wood.

"How long before it's released?" she demanded of Mel, because everything about the song seemed to work—the backup Horse provided bringing one more colouration to the enterprise to change it yet again.