The Diviners (12 page)

“Yep. We're all there.”

“Which one is he? Which
one
?”

Christie and Morag both peer at the picture. Row after row, faraway faces. They are very very small in the photo. And they all look the same, because no face is clear.

“Lemme see,” Christie says. “This one? No. Maybe not. Maybe this one? Which is myself? Lord, Morag, I can't even find my own self.”

Morag looks at the long-ago picture. One of these men is Colin Gunn, her father. But it could be any one of them. She says nothing.

“Your dad saved my life that one time, then,” Christie says. “He did? When? How?” “Bourlon Wood.”

He looks up. They read what the book says.

 

On the night of September 26th the guns were moved into position. Zero hour was 5
A.M.
on the 27th September, and, promptly to the second, the guns opened fire, continuing in action until 12:10
P.M.

Notwithstanding the secrecy with which the operations had been performed by the Battery, their position must have been spotted, for no sooner had the barrage started than the enemy shelled the guns with whiz-bangs; if it had not been for the fact that the guns were below the level of the ground, the casualties might have been heavy. As it was, the men escaped by a very narrow margin. Time and again a perfect ring of ground bursts encircled the guns, within a very few yards radius, and as the smoke slowly rose and thinned out, it was
with a hopeless sort of hope that their comrades glanced around to assure themselves of the safety of the various crews. This phase of the attack included the capture of Bourlon Wood.

 

“Oh Jesus,” Christie says, “don't they make it sound like a Sunday school picnic?”

“What happened, Christie?”

Christie sits down and rolls a cigarette.

CHRISTIE'S TALE OF THE BATTLE OF BOURLON WOOD

Well, d'you see, it was like the book says, but it wasn't like that, also. That is the strangeness.

Holy God, with all of them guns pounding away that morning, the sky was like fire,
Like
fire, did I say? It
was
fire. We was firing from the trenches. Them trenches, now. You never heard of “trench foot”? The feet would rot. They'd rot, I tell you, because they'd be wet with the mud and slime and shit and horsepiss all the time. You'd be trying to line up them devils of guns, the eighteen-pounders, and you'd be up to your bloody navel in muck, nearly.

It was terrible for the horses. I've seen horses sinking in mud, where there was a crater, do you see, a shell crater and it would be filled with that damned mire. Once I seen a horse going under, and its mouth foaming with the fear, and its eyes wild as a lunatic's eyes, and its voice screaming. Not neighing or like that. Screaming. Drowning in mud. Jesus, it's the mud you recall more than anything, nearly.

(What happened that day, Christie? Go on.)

Your dad and me was both gunners. He was my mate, do you see. We worked the big gun together.

(Gunner Gunn. That's funny, eh?)

Not so funny you'd hardly have noticed it at the time. I was older than Colin, and not so quick, I would say. There we are, getting ready to fire old Brimstone, and a shell explodes so christly close to me I think I'm a goner. The noise. Jesus. And then the air all around me is filled with

(With what, Christie? Why are you stopping?)

Well, then, with bleeding bits of a man. Blown to smithereens. A leg. A hand. Guts, which was that red and wet you would not credit it at all.

(Oh.)

I thought–God, it's Colin. Then the noise or some damn thing got me. I started to shake and I couldn't move my feet from the spot I was standing on. Then–I don't remember. I must've passed out. When I came to, it was away past midnight and it was that quiet you could hear the heart beating in you. The stars was out, and I recall they scared me at first. I thought they'd be more shells, you see. But they didn't move or come closer. Then your dad gave me some water. He must've dragged me into the dugouts where we bunked, out of the fire. The water spilled. A goddamn waste. I couldn't drink it. I was still shaking like a fool.

(What then, Christie?)

 

But the story is over. Christie gets up. He is, Morag sees, shaking.

“I wish I had not found that christly book at all,” he says.

And goes to bed.

“Can I have the book, Prin?” Morag says. “If he doesn't want it, then can I have it?”

“Sh,” Prin whispers. “I don't think he would want to part with it. Don't ask him, will you, now?”

Christie has heard, though. He doesn't come back into the kitchen that night, but the next morning he opens his hands to Morag.

“Not the book,” he says. “And I don't have anything that was your father's. But you can have this if you want it.”

It is a knife. About eight inches long including the handle, which is dark-brown and leathery. The blade is wide and comes to a very sharp point at the end. A hunting knife. Morag takes it. Examines it. On the handle, burned into it, it seems is a sign:

“What's that sign, Christie?”

“I dunno. A knife's not much of a thing to give a girl, I guess. I found it in the same drawer as the book. Haven't seen it for years. Some young twerp of a kid offered to trade me it for a package of cigarettes, so I done it. It's never been any good to me, though. He talked me into it. Great talker, he was, as a boy, though not as a man. Killed a year or so ago, when his truck smacked into an oncoming freight, reckless young devil, poor sod, drunk at the time no doubt. Well, I guess it's not much of a Christmas present.”

“If you hadn't had that bottle of hooch, you could of bought candies,” Prin says.

“Jesus, woman, don't you think I know it?”

“I like this,” Morag says. “I like it fine, Christie. Honest.”

Christie has never given her a present before, except sometimes candies. But never a lasting present. Ashamed of this one, and of herself, she shoves it away to the back of her dresser drawer.

 

FOUR

T
he starlings and grackles began their dawn performance, a chorus of iron-throated squawks accompanied by a heavy-footed ballet on the roof. Morag sighed. Birds should be light in the step. These sounded like carthorses,
tramp tramp tramp
. Birds transformed into tiny moose for an hour at sunup. Never any swallows walking on the roof, you could be certain. They would no doubt at least have pranced prettily, but sensibly preferred to fly.

If the farmhouse had had upstairs ceilings, the birdfeet would not be quite so thundering. But there was only the rafters. Morag liked it this way because it showed the way the house had been built, nearly a hundred years ago by a homesteader called Cooper. Whose sons and grandsons had farmed the beautifully treed but rocky land until finally giving up, selling out and moving to some town or other. The house was log, still as sound as the year it was built. The door frames and window sills were handhewn timber, although the floorboards and doors had come from a sawmill. The rooms were small. Morag had obtained the furniture–old-fashioned straight-backed chair, pine dressers, the long table in the kitchen–at
secondhand furniture stores in McConnell's Landing. The oldness of the farmhouse, the roughness, were qualities Morag would have loathed as a kid. Now she valued them.

Morag gave up the battle to block her ears against the birds, and got up. The kitchen was cool and would remain so. The thick walls kept out the heat. She put her head outside the door. The river was still. No breeze. The trees across the river were reflected in the water so sharply you could imagine it was another world there, a treeworld in the water, willows and oak and maples, all growing there, climbed upon by river-children, and slithered finnily through by muskie and yellow perch. The day, she predicted, was going to be a scorcher.

Royland would be here in about an hour. Today was the day.

You wondered about people like the Cooper family, all those years ago. Trekking in here to take up their homestead. No roads. Bush. Hacking their way. Wagons and horses? Probably coming much of the way by river. Barges teetering and overloaded. Then the people clearing the first growth of timber. Shifting the rocks from fields, making stone walls to outline the land to be cultivated. The sheer unthinkable back-and-heart-breaking slog. Women working like horses. Also, probably pregnant most of the time. Baking bread in brick ovens, with a loaf in their own ovens. Looking after broods of chickens and kids. Terrible. Appalling.

Healthy life, though. No one died of lung cancer. Strong and fit, they were, tanned and competent. Pioneers oh pioneers.

But what about a burst appendix? Desperately ill kids? Fever? Women having breech births or other disorders of childbearing? The tiny cemetery on the hill contained, among other stones, the one to Simon Cooper's first wife.

In Memory of Sarah Cooper

Who Died in Childbirth

June 20, 1880, Age 24.

She Rests In The Lord.

 

Probably glad to rest anywhere, poor lady, even In The Lord. How many women went mad? Loneliness, isolation, strain, despair, overwork, fear. Out there, the bush. In here, a silent worried work-sodden man, squalling brats, an open fireplace, and would the shack catch fire this week or next? In winter, snow up to your thighs. Outdoor privy. People flopping through drifts to the barn to milk the cow. What fun. Healthy life indeed. A wonder they weren't all raving lunatics. Probably many were. It's the full of the moon, George–Mrs. Cooper always howls like this at such a time–nothing to worry about–she'll be right as rain come the morning–c'mon there, Sarah, quit crouching in the corner and stop baring your fangs like that–George and me's hungry and would appreciate a spot of grub.
Onward, Christian Soldiers. Thy Way Not Mine O Lord However Dark It Be.

The fact remained that they
had
hacked out a living here. They had survived. Like so-called Piper Gunn and the Sutherlanders further west. Was it better or worse now? Both. Both. At least
their
children did not wander to God knows where. Unknown destinies, far and probably lethal places. If any
did
, though, there were no telephones and the mail services could hardly have been very snappy. Well, then,
they
did not have to wrench up their guts and hearts etcetera and set these carefully down on paper, in order to live. Clever of them, one might say. Anyway, some of them did. Including women.
Catharine Parr Trail, mid-1800s, botanist, drawing and naming wildflowers, writing a guide for settlers with one hand, whilst rearing a brace of young and working like a galley slave with the other.

 

From the Birch, A Thousand Useful Utensils Can Be Made. A Few Hints On Gardening
(including how to start an orchard, how to
start
it!)

 

 

And so on. It did not bear thinking about. Morag, running her log house with admirable efficiency and a little help from the electric fridge, kettle, toaster, stove, iron, baseboard heaters, furnace, lights, not to mention the local supermarket and Ron Jewitt's friendly neighbourhood taxi. Great God Almighty.

The song sparrow was tuning up in the small elm outside the window. Its song was unambiguous.

Pres-pres-pres-pres-Presbyterian!

Mrs. Eula McCann from several miles away had dropped in with welcome raisin buns when Morag and Pique originally moved in, and had asked Morag if she had heard the bird which said that word. Morag, until that moment, had only
heard it as a pleasant trill. Since that day, however, its message came across loud and clear.

Catharine Parr Traill, one could be quite certain, would not have been found of an early morning sitting over a fourth cup of coffee, mulling, approaching the day in gingerly fashion, trying to size it up. No. No such sloth for Catharine P.T.

 

Scene at the Traill Homestead, Circa 1840

C.P.T. out of bed, fully awake, bare feet on the sliver-hazardous floorboards–no, take that one again. Feet on the homemade hooked rug. Breakfast cooked for the multitude. Out to feed the chickens, stopping briefly on the way back to pull fourteen armloads of weeds out of the vegetable garden and perhaps prune the odd apple tree in passing. The children's education hour, the umpteen little mites lisping enthusiastically over this enlightenment. Cleaning the house, baking two hundred loaves of delicious bread, preserving half a ton of plums, pears, cherries, etcetera. All before lunch.

 

Catharine Parr Trail, where are you now that we need you? Speak, oh lady of blessed memory.

 

Where the hell was Pique and why didn't she phone or write? If Pique were not carrying any form of identification (as was likely), how would anyone know who she was and be able to get in touch with Morag if anything happened? Should Morag try to trace her? Pique had been okay not too long ago. The phone message from Pique's father had established that. But where was she now and why didn't she simply
say?
Was this over-concern on Morag's part? No doubt. But still. How could you stop yourself from worrying? The kid was eighteen. Only. What had Catharine said, somewhere, about emergencies?

Morag loped over to the bookshelves which lined two walls of the seldom-used livingroom. Found the pertinent text.

 

In cases of emergency, it is folly to fold one's hands and sit down to bewail in abject terror. It is better to be up and doing.

(
The Canadian Settlers' Guide
, 1855)

 

 

The knocking (only now noticed by Morag) at the kitchen door had ceased and Royland had stepped inside. She knew from his step, slow but not heavy, that it was him.

“First sign of going off your rocker, Morag, so they say.”

Embarrassed, she returned the book to its place and went back to the kitchen.

“Don't you ever talk out loud to yourself, Royland?”

“Oh sure. It's when I start answering myself I get worried.”

Ha ha. The ancient joke.

“I was not answering myself,” Morag said. “I was holding a polite if somewhat controversial conversation with a lady of my acquaintance, who happens not to inhabit this vale of tears any more.”

“You and Joan of Arc, the pair of you,” Royland said, cough-laughing into the grey shagginess of his chin foliage.

“The lady of
her
acquaintance held–um–a slightly more distinguished position than this lady of mine. Want some coffee?”

“Don't mind if I do. You working yet, Morag?”

He got the word right now. Once he used to ask her if she was doing any writing these days. Until he learned that the only meaning the word
work
had for her was writing, which was peculiar, considering that it was more of a free gift than work, when it was going well, and the only kind of work she enjoyed doing.

“I don't know. I mean, about the thing I seem to want to do, or have to. It seems like an awfully dubious idea, in a lot of ways, but I guess I'll have to go on with it. Maybe it's begun. I don't know very much about it yet.”

“Heard from Pique?”

“No.” Turning away so the old man would not see her request for reassurance.

“I thought not. You have got to quit fretting over that girl. As I keep saying.”

Morag turned suddenly and faced him.

“Don't mistake me, Royland. I don't want her living here any more. She can't. She mustn't. She's got to be on her own. Anything else is no good for her and no good for me. It's just that I'd like to hear from time to time that she's okay, is all.”

“You think she isn't?”

“Remember that time a year ago, when she left school and took off?”

“Yeh. She came back, though. And is now a whole year older.”

“She was in a mental hospital in Toronto for a month. A bad trip, as they somewhat euphemistically say. She hasn't had a very easy life, Royland. I clobbered her with a hell of a situation to live in, although I never meant to. Okay, maybe everything else clobbered her, too, and I'm not God and I'm not responsible for everything. But I chose to have her, in the first place, and maybe I should've seen it would be too difficult for her. You don't think of that, at the time, or I didn't, anyway.”

Pique, her long black hair spread over the hospital pillow, her face turned away from Morag, her voice low and fierce.
Can't you see I despise you? Can't you see I want you to go away? You aren't my mother. I haven't got a mother.
The nurse, candy-voiced, telling Morag it would be best for her to leave and in a week or so we would see, Morag, walking on streets, not knowing where, stumbling into people, seeing only small hard-bright replayed movies inside. Pique at five saying
Tell me the story about the robin in our own dogwood tree please Mum.
Pique on the first plane flight saying
Is it safe Mum?
and Morag saying
Yes
, hoping this was true. Pique in England saying
We're going home?
and not knowing where that place could be. Pique saying
Are we really going to live on a farm and can I have a dog?
Pique, when her father visited both those
times, ten years apart, and then when he had to go away again, Pique saying nothing. Nothing. Pique's face turned away, her hair spread across the white freeze-drift of hospital linen, saying
I despise you
.

“You know something, Royland?” Morag said. “I guess I feel that sometimes she despises me. And there are moments when I can see her point, there.”

“I knew about Pique in Toronto,” Royland said. “She told me.”

“She did?”

“Sure. She said she couldn't be certain she wouldn't do it again, but she hoped she wouldn't, on account of she wanted to get her head together–that was how she put it–by herself. Also, she doesn't despise you. She has mixed feelings, is all. Haven't you ever had?”

Christie. Prin. Brooke. Pique's father. Dan McRaith. Pique.

“Yes. Of course. Naturally.”

“You should try to rest your soul,” Royland said. “You ready to go now, Morag?”

A strong south wind had risen, and the river was darker now, the water undulating under the boat.

“What if it rains?” Morag asked.

“Makes no difference. Water's still there underground.”

At the Smiths' dock, grey weathered timbers and driftwood logs, built by A-Okay, Royland drew the boat in, tied it, and they walked up the slope to the house.

The Smiths' house was brick, dark red, with a gabled roof on which A-Okay had already restored the wooden lace, now painted white by Maudie, suffering vertigo on the ladder but never once saying
Die
or even
Down
. They had rented the farm, with an option to buy, always supposing A-Okay could whomp up the necessary money from the pop science articles
he wrote. The rent was small, because the land was neglected and overgrown and the house, while pleasing on the outside, had been virtually only a shell. The floors were sound, but that was about all you could say for it. The rest was a shambles. But being restored.