Prairie Grass

by Joan Soggie

  He was answering my questions about his early childhood. His memories of the years in the sod house were vivid, and he readily shared stories of exploits that seemed well beyond a child of the years he claimed to be at the time. I’d thought, “He is mixing up events of those early years with later times.”

  I’d asked him if he had always lived on the homestead, from the time he came there as a baby until he retired from farming. He replied that, no, his parents moved the family from the homestead before he was seven, and he spent the rest of his growing-up years on this second farm.

  “Only a matter of ten miles or so from the homestead,” he said. “But it might as well have been a hundred miles away. I sometimes think those years on the new farm were the hardest years of my life.” He chuckled. “Of course, I was just a kid.”

  But his laugh sounded forced, now that I listened carefully. I wondered, what he meant by that? Wouldn’t one farm, one bit of land, be much like any other, to a young child?

  He had immediately gone on to explain there had been good practical reasons for the move.

  “Paul, Mother’s brother, had built a nice new two-story house, then decided to move back to Iowa. With our homestead proved up, it was an opportunity to move into a better house, on a farmstead just a few miles from my mother’s parents’ farm. I remember Grandma saying, ‘There is no reason for you to continue to live like half-breeds.’”

  His voice sounded sad. “Everyone seemed to think it would be better. Better for Mother. Better for all of us.”

  He readily shared the story of the move itself, which must have been an exciting event for a boy of his years. “I crossed off each day on the calendar.”

  My cell phone jolted me back to the present. It was Diane Welland, Coordinator of the Centenarian Project.

  “Hi Gabby, I know it’s your day off tomorrow, but if you have time, how about running into Saskatoon? Truth and Reconciliation Hearings at the old fairgrounds. You know, the hearings for people affected by the government policy of sending Indian children to residential schools? You have heard about that? Good! There will be someone there I’d like you to meet. She might be willing to provide you with an introduction. An Indigenous centenarian who grew up in Sector Three, lived near Saskatchewan Landing. Might almost have been a contemporary of your subject.”

  So, some of the original population had avoided the reservations. How had they managed that? Had they just melted into the community, blending with the farmers and ranchers who were their neighbours? Or had they chosen to remain separate?

  Well, that took care of my weekend. I texted Andy. Maybe he would consent to come with me on this three or four-hour drive from Swift Current to Saskatoon. We could camp on our way back and still have time for a Sunday hike.

  Eric (1917)

  Eric wakes to the smell of bacon and the sound of it crackling in the frying pan. Sunshine spills through the window. He slides out of bed and steps carefully over Elise, sprawled asleep on her trundle bed beside his low cot. Pulling on overalls over his cotton shirt, he shoves aside the curtain that separates the bedroom from the main living area. His mother is bent double cramming a heap of blankets into the trunk.

  Without looking up, she says, “Come and eat, Eric. We have lots to do this morning. It’s moving day today.”

  Never has Eric’s home been so topsy-turvy. This whole past month has buzzed with unusual goings-on. First came the news that Uncle Paul was moving back to the States. Then Grandma suggested Eric’s parents might seize this opportunity to move from the homestead, now they had title to it, and purchase Uncle Paul’s farm with its brand new two-story wooden house.

  Grandma’s words are burned into Eric’s memory.

  “Hard work never hurt anyone, but even you, Abigail, cannot keep up the pace you set yourself. You cannot do the work of a hired man as well as a farmwife. Not with a new baby coming every other year. This life will kill you.”

  Her words terrified Eric. It strikes him that something about this wonderful life they live on their homestead in the hills, the only home he has known, is terribly dangerous for his mother. Was it having the babies that hurt her? Or the farm itself? Whatever it was, when Eric’s father readily falls in with the plan, Eric is convinced the danger is imminent. He throws all his energy into helping with preparations for the move.

  Moving Day is circled on the wall calendar by Eric’s own hand, every day leading up to it carefully crossed off.

  Now today is the day. The bright rag rugs on the plank floor, the curtains on the window above the table, the butter churn, the trunk, everything is being rolled or folded or packed in preparation

  “There is bacon and porridge on the stove, Eric.” His mother is still sorting things to stuff into the trunk.

  That wooden steamer trunk has been his seat at the table for as far back as he can remember. Eric fills his plate and bowl and climbs into his father’s big chair at the head of the table. He keeps an anxious eye on his mother as he spoons up the porridge, hoping she is too preoccupied with her packing to notice the heap of dry green mold exposed behind the trunk. Despite her stern admonitions to “Eat your crusts,” Eric has resorted to deception. Abigail makes bread from sourdough, to save spending cash on yeast. The resulting bread is a solid and coarse-textured, though nutritious, loaf. Little Elise eats her bread soaked in milk. Per, wise to the cook’s sensitivities, does not. Eric has resorted to depositing the most chew-resistant crusts in a convenient space between the trunk and the wall.

  Abigail lets the trunk lid slam shut. “When you finish eating, go find your father and tell him the trunk is ready to load into the wagon.”

  Eric watches her as she straightens up. She wipes her forehead with a corner of her apron, takes a deep breath and looks around the room. Rivers of dust motes dance in the air. The windows, shorn of their curtains, blaze white light. Gone is the familiar cozy dimness. Curtains, bed frames, almost everything, from the walls themselves to the fancy-cut newspaper decorating the packing-box shelves, has been the product of their own hands. She gives her head a shake and turns back to Eric.

  “Then come right back and help me load the table and chairs. We’ll just spread a blanket outside in the shade and have a picnic for dinner. We’ve had our last meal in this house.”

  Relieved his crusts seem to have escaped her notice Eric runs outside into blinding sunshine. The heat indoors is nothing to this. Dry grass crackles under his bare feet as he jogs to where his father and the hired man are loading machinery and tools onto the hayrack.

  The day passes in one long hot sweaty blur. Trudge back and forth from house to wagon, dragging a chair or a box. Stow small items wrapped by his mother into every nook and cranny under or around the furniture. Scoop the guilty bread-crusts into the cleaned chamber pot. Fetch water for the men. Fetch Derwood, who has somehow managed to crawl through the flap-covered chicken-door into the chicken coop before he is missed. As shadows lengthen under the scorching stillness of late afternoon, Eric lures the renegade hens with his green bread-crusts, then plops them squawking into gunny sacks left beside the hayrack for that purpose.

  Finally, they are ready. Derwood is wrapped asleep in his cradle wedged behind the wagon seat. Elise is perched bright-eyed between Eric and their mother. Abigail slaps the reins, Pet and Alice step obediently forward, wagon wheels rumble over the sun-baked ground. Behind them comes Per on the hayrack piled high with assorted farm tools, scythes and stone boats and pitchforks, pulled by Jack and Jenny, their team of mules. The milk cow ambles behind, tethered by a stout rope to the rack. The oxen, Maggie and Polly, draw the last hayrack loaded with chickens and pigs and feeding troughs, driven by Ole, the hired hand. There will be no hurrying this convoy. The horses might easily cover two miles in the time it takes the oxen to do one, but no speed is needed or expected, in such heat, with such a load. Night will come, children and chickens will sleep, the wagons will creep to their destination.

  By dusk, the slower wagons have fallen
behind, out of sight. The rhythmic clop-squeak-rattle of hooves and wheels lulls Elise and even Eric to sleep.

  He catapults out of his dreams to an ear-splitting crack of thunder. Blackness is all around. For a stifling moment he fights to free himself from the quilt Abigail has thrown over him. Then his mother’s voice recalls him to his surroundings.

  “It’s all right, Eric,” she says, “Just a storm moving in. We can’t be too far from the Johansens’ place. We will stop there and wait for your father.”

  Pulling himself upright, he looks around. Flickering stabs of lightning reveal an alien landscape, each object, each blade of grass exposed in lurid detail, black shadowed and strange. Even Pet’s eyes seem to gleam malevolently as she swings her head around, ears back in fearful anticipation of thunder. Eric recalls his father’s warning about going near livestock in a thunderstorm.

  “If you are out riding, it is better to turn your horse loose and find shelter for yourself,” he’d said. “Animals seem to attract lightning, and they know it. Even if you’re not struck by lightning, you might get thrown if your horse panics.”

  Eric feels rather than sees his mother gripping the reins, muscles taut, struggling to hold the team in. Alice shakes her harness as though she wants to rid herself of encumbrances and flee through the charged air. Low rumbles of thunder build to a deafening roar. A sudden sweep of wind rips the quilt from him. Eric shivers.

  Then out of the alternating gloom and explosions of light, a familiar yellow gleam.

  “There it is, Mother,” he cries, “That must be their place.”

  The Johansen’s had arrived the previous year from Norway. Eric met them only once, at a community picnic. His father and Mr. Johansen had talked in a mixture of Norwegian and English. He wonders now how his mother, who claims to understand a little Norwegian but not speak it, will get on with this immigrant family. They are all immigrants, whether from England or Norway or Minnesota, and yet the boy has become aware of fine grades of distinction among the settlers, the degree of Englishness the deciding factor. Immigrants from the United States, English speakers all, were almost, though not quite, on par with the British-ers. His own family has a subtle advantage over those fresh from ‘the old country’.

  But minor details like language fall before the urgency of finding shelter from the storm. The wind strikes them like a solid wall, thunder rolls out of the blackness, the first splats of cold rain mixed with hail sting his face. His hesitant knock on the rough-hewn door brings an immediate response, fully intelligible though he understands not a word. Mr. Johansen ushers the boy inside, then hurries out to help Abigail bring the younger ones from the wagon. He lifts down the cradle holding the still sleeping baby. Mrs. Johansen joins whole-heartedly in Abigail’s momentary alarm when Elise is not found among the blankets in the wagon. General consternation turns to universal mirth when Eric finds her curled fast asleep inside the bread-mixing bowl. The horses are led to shelter in the lean-to.

  Then all is light, warmth and kindliness as the door closes on the storm. Abigail lays the two younger children in the curtained sleeping area where the Johansens’ little girls are already abed, and gratefully accepts a cup of steaming coffee. She sinks into the rocking chair pushed towards her and sighs.

  “Yes, we are on our way to the Paul Dahl place,” she replies to Mr. Johansen’s courteous inquiry. “We bought the place from my uncle. That will be our home from now on.”

  “Ja,” smiles Mrs. Johansen, patting her shoulder. “That’s gud. Ve vill be friends.”

  Abigail straightens slightly and gives her a grateful little smile.

  “Yes,” she replies, “neighbours must be friends.”

  Eric awakens when his father arrives at the Johansen’s. The storm has passed, the wind and rain gone as quickly as it came. The night air is cool and fresh on his cheeks after the stuffiness of the little house. He stumbles to the wagon as his father carries Elise, sound asleep in her blanket, and stows her safely back into the mixing bowl. His eyelids are leaden.

  Morning comes and Eric’s eyes open at his usual time. Sunlight streams in the window and the smell of coffee and bacon tickle his nose. But he is in a strange room, with bare wooden plank floor, walls plastered and papered, a high sloping ceiling. He scrambles out of bed to the window and stares down at the scene below him. He falls to his knees, leaning his chin on the windowsill, unbelieving and confused. Gone is the friendly view of hills and fields framed by the thick earthen walls of the soddie. Instead, he looks down from a dizzying height upon an unfamiliar farmyard bordered with barns and fences.

  Overnight, his world has changed.

  Chapter Four

  Western Wheatgrass. Long, stiff, blue-green blades with rough, veined upper surface. Most common in moist, saline and heavy soils. Good forage. Sod-forming with slender rhizomes. Gabriella’s Prairie Notes

  Gabby (2012)

  Andy did agree to come with me, but only part way. He offered to drive for the first 70 miles though, while I caught up on my sleep. I woke up when the truck came to a stop and opened my eyes to a landscape of purple hills and yellowish-white cliffs falling away to the lake’s blue a few hundred meters below.

  I tried to keep the surprise out of my voice. I was still annoyed he refused to come with me to the hearings, “to listen to a bunch of senile old whiners complain about what happened a hundred years ago,” as he put it.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of climbing around these hills?” I asked, pretending to yawn. I would have given anything, almost, to be going with him.

  “No more than you get tired of hearing old guys drone on and on,” he mocked.

  In fact, I believe he enjoyed stories of olden days almost as much as I did. It was the inactivity he despised. A man of action, this boyfriend of mine. All week on horseback or hiking the pasture- land adjacent to the Great Sandhills, part of the team commissioned by an oil company to do the required survey of possible archaeological sites prior to drilling. Then, come weekend, he changed venue and, leaving the tools of his trade behind, donned the same boots and knapsack he used all week and headed off to explore any quarter section a farmer or rancher would open to him. It was from one of them that he’d heard about these sandstone cliffs before us. I knew he was champing at the bit to explore them. But first, he had to explain to me the labyrinth of trails needed to get me back to the main road.

  “Never mind,” he said finally, after I had asked him for the second time whether by ‘turning north’ he meant going right or left. “Just follow this track to the Hutterite colony — see those white building off in the distance? Then keep the sun on your right ‘til you hit the highway. Turn on the GPS so you can find your way back this afternoon.”

  I waved him an airy goodbye from the driver’s seat.

  “Don’t fall off one of those cliffs and break your neck, now,” I warned, imitating his mother’s irritating voice.

  “Don’t you fall in love with one of your old guys and forget to come back for me.” He kissed me, grabbed his knapsack off the floor, and was gone, his long-legged loose-jointed walk carrying him out of sight over the crest of the hill.

  Following his directions, I found my way back to the highway and settled down for the two-hour drive to Saskatoon. Good, I thought. Time to review the few facts I’d gleaned from my Google search of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

  I’d learned the commission had been formed by the Canadian government as part of a court-approved settlement agreement. Its goal was to provide an opportunity for residential school survivors and their families to tell their stories. I guessed the hope was that former students would find healing and the non-Indigenous population would gain understanding.

  Must be coffee break time, I thought, judging from the number of smokers streaming out to light up when I parked under the official-looking Truth and Reconciliation Hearings banner a few hours later. I walked through a haze of tobacco smoke and conversation to join the queue at the coffee and donut
table. Looking around for Diane, it was not hard to pick out her blond head. She really stood out in this crowd. It looked as though the “truth” might be told but there would be darned little “reconciliation” on this day’s agenda. Where were all the non-aboriginals? On the golf course? Washing the car? Taking the kids to soccer?

  Well, naturally it wouldn’t be on your radar unless you had some reason to be involved. I reminded myself that, but for Diane’s phone call yesterday, I wouldn’t have even known about the T&R Hearings. And after all, what did it matter to anyone other than those directly involved? This sort of thing should naturally be left to official representatives of those responsible for the residential schools. The church and state. And learning about it was the business of sociologists or journalists. My business.

  Diane was in animated discussion with a chunky lady in red jacket and black capris when I joined them, balancing a donut on top of my coffee cup and hoping she wouldn’t expect me to shake hands.

  “Gabby, I’m glad you are here! Monica, this is Gabriella Mackenzie, our field worker in the south-west region. Gabby, Monica’s a member of the Clear Water tribal council. I was just telling her that you’re hoping to find one or two centenarians to interview among the Indigenous population.”

  “Have you found any?” asked the red jacket.

  “Not yet, but I’m looking,” I responded brightly.

  “Well, it should not be that hard. First Nations birth records have been kept since the reserve system was implemented, and Metis records are well documented.” Monica spoke as one who knows. And as one who has little patience with those who do not. “Of course, our elders try to avoid being placed in nursing homes. They have a natural distrust of institutions. A centenarian would probably have a network of relatives watching out for them. You would have to ask permission to speak with an elder and learn the protocol of respect. It would help if you had a personal connection. I suppose you have asked your own family to help locate anyone they might know about?”