Paper Stones

by Laurie Ray Hill

  Maybe, to her, Ian was old.

  The shrink, Marion, got her drawing pictures of this cave and the man in it.

  One day, when I’d went to pick up Jenny, Marion asks me into her office. She says, “Jenny seems to be working through her abuse experiences. But what has me stumped is that the details she’s drawing are authentic-looking, like actual cave paintings.” Marion looked at me. She was creeped out. Said she’d like to show us the pictures.

  Me and Dave went by ourself to see them. Jenny’s strange pictures were spread out on the long table in the art therapy room. The shrink, she had four library books spread out alongside of them.

  “It’s details like this that really make me wonder!” Marion was pointing to a picture in the top right corner of one of Jenny’s papers.

  I like this shrink Marion, eh. She’s just a human being, leaning over the table with a puzzled look on her. (Not on any high throne like what Meredith always used to be.)

  The picture she’s pointing out is a thing kind of like a rabbit, red, with long ears sticking up. It struck me odd Jenny wanting to draw with that rust red colour so much. Wasn’t a colour she normally picked out.

  I said I’d took that animal for Timothy, Jenny’s stuffed rabbit. Mind you, Timothy, he’s yellow. But there was a picture in the library book looked a lot more like it than Timothy.

  The shrink says, “Have you ever taken Jenny to see any petroglyphs?”

  Me and Dave look at each other.

  “Rock paintings done by First Nations people? Natives?” Marion says.

  We shook our heads.

  Spent a long time in there, leafing through the books and Jenny’s drawings, feeling weirder and weirder. We found six different drawings Jenny done that looked like ones in the books.

  The shrink, she come up with the idea of showing this stuff to somebody that would know. That’s how we met Cheryl, the petroglyph expert, who’s a First Nations person. Cheryl’s a good friend of mine now. We go for walks or we take a canoe out and we talk about everything under the sun.

  Nothing weird about Josie seeing the future, as far as Cheryl’s concerned. Says there’s some like Josie in every generation. They’re sent to us kindly by the Great Spirit to show us the way.

  How she talks strikes me a lot like the way Sally and Tao talks. We’re sons and daughters of the earth and sky, the way Cheryl puts it. Sally says we’re children of the light. Tao will tell you you’re connected to every strand in the web of all.

  For sure, if yous keep on learning about yourself, you’re going to come to the night-blue stepping stone that I don’t know a name for. I just call it the mystery stone. The spirit stone.

  That first day we met Cheryl, we took a folder full of Jenny’s pictures and drove up to her place at the far end of the lake.

  Sitting in Cheryl’s front room, you look down the long shore of Lost Gold Lake towards our place. Macaulay’s Point is way off, floating in a blue mist. Water’s real quiet and green today. Somebody has a canoe out. Looks like it’s sitting on a mirror. Just like back in the days when Cheryl’s people was the only ones here.

  We opened up the folder. Cheryl, she took one look at them pictures. “Has your daughter ever been to the place that you folks call Macaulay’s Point, that peninsula down there?”

  We told her we owned it.

  Cheryl, she got a funny look on her. We might just as well have told her we owned the northern lights.

  Anyways, sure, we said Jenny’d been around Macaulay’s Point all the time the last year and a half. Told Cheryl we were the ones just built the lodge there.

  Cheryl, she watched the red canoe slipping along in the green shadows, near shore. Looked at Jenny’s pictures again, careful. I could see her making up her mind whether to tell us something. She decides to. She says, “There are hints in stories about a cave near here.”

  Dave shoots up out of his chair. “There is a real cave?”

  “People have searched for one, because the oral tradition seems to suggest that there may be one; but, if there is, it has not been found. There are four vision pits in that area, but they are not caves. There are paintings on the rock face but they can only be seen from the water.”

  Cheryl was excited. She tells us that Jenny’s pictures remind her of certain Anishinaabe petroglyphs, but they are not the specific ones known to exist in this area.

  Who the hell’s this cave man? That’s what me and Dave wanted to know.

  Marion, the shrink, she thought that Jenny was making up that part, even if there was some real rock pictures out there somewheres.

  “Shrink says Jenny’s telling them tales to help herself work through what happened with Ian,” I told Dave. “She says Jenny’s probably weaving a fantasy around some powerful pictures that she’s found. It’s important to her to have the place be a secret. It’s her private healing place. We shouldn’t intrude into it.”

  That’s what I said to Dave, passing on what Marion, the shrink, was telling me. But I was none too comfortable. And I never seen Dave so restless. He’s a busy man these days, with all he’s got to see to. But he still found the time to worry himself ragged.

  He was in my office every half an hour. “Where’s Jenny?”

  “Out in the boat with your dad and Matthew.”

  “No. They come in.”

  “Then she’s likely in the kitchen with Sally.”

  “No. I checked.”

  “Then she’ll be just out back.”

  He’d go look. He had to see her every second.

  Jenny, she missed her freedom. Dave didn’t want her outdoors without somebody watching her. He was turning into a bigger worrywart than me.

  Finally she come right out and told him she wanted to go to the cave. Dave, he said fine but he was going with her. “I want to go by myself,” she told him.

  “Look,” he says, “you got to tell me. Are you talking about a real cave?”

  Jenny, she looked at the floor, wiggled her toe around.

  “Jenny!” he says. “I’m asking you a question.”

  She wouldn’t say nothing.

  Dave got mad. Started yelling at her that this wasn’t funny. He had to know. “Is there a man out there?”

  She wouldn’t say nothing.

  I says, “I wonder if maybe she don’t know, Dave.”

  “How could she not know?”

  “Well, like Josie. She don’t always know if she seen something or dreamed it.”

  Dave, he was going crazy. He says, “Listen here, my girl,” he says. “You are not to be off in the bush by yourself. You hear?”

  Jenny, she keeps on looking at the floor.

  So then we run into our first real trouble with raising Jenny. She started sneaking off.

  Me and Dave got frantic more than once. We’d be out searching for her. She’d come wandering back, dirty. Secret look on her face.

  Dave was out in the bush at all hours, trying to find out if there was really a cave anywhere out there. Or a man.

  Josie, she got restless, which I never seen before. Didn’t want to sit and look at the lake. Didn’t want to sit in her rocking chair. She was always hugging herself, squirming. She wanted to go from one place to another all the time. Her dog would pace around and whine.

  I’d yell at it to lay down.

  Tammy was always wheeling Josie somewheres. The guests, ones that knew her story, they were nice to her. Matthew, he’d walk on his hands, bring her his lizard. Sally would be fussing around, trying to make her comfortable. Nothing seemed to quiet Josie’s mind. Whenever I’d sit beside her a minute, she’d grab my hand. Eyes wild. “The cave man!” she’d say. Or, “The cave father!”

  One time she said, “The grandfather!” And she looks at me with this look on her face like she’s begging me.

  I says, “Jos,” I says
, “what?”

  She hung on to me with both her hands, like she could tell me through the grip of her fingers. You should’ve saw her eyes!

  What could be eating her? The cave grandfather? Josie sure didn’t look to me like she was thinking over some old theory of ours. She was trying to tell me something. I couldn’t get what it was.

  We were all trying.

  The men, they were going to fix things, eh, the way men will try to do, lord love them. Sally’s Tao, he went and moved everything around in Josie’s room. Said she had the garbage pail on the wrong wall and the bed facing away from the door. That explained her, as far as he was concerned. That’d unbalance anybody, to have their garbage can over there.

  Dave, he thought Josie was on the wrong medicine. Went and talked to them at the home. Made them call the doctor.

  Al, he tried to get her to do crossword puzzles. If you don’t do enough crossword puzzles, your brain will seize up, according to him. It was pitiful to see him sitting there trying to get her to think of a seven-letter word for highly strung. And her staring at him, urgent, squirming in her wheelchair.

  Us women, we were all talking about it, the way women will.

  I said to Sally, “I guess you’re on this?”

  Sal knew I meant praying. “Oh, you bet,” she said. “And the Lord is merciful, abounding in steadfast love.”

  For me, eh, there’s times when it’s not so hard to believe something like that, and times when it’s pretty well impossible. But good old Sally. Through thick and thin, she keeps on saying, “All things works together for good.”

  Tom’s whole construction crew and a bunch of friends of Cheryl’s come down one Sunday, and they went over Macaulay’s Point, every stick and stone of it, hunting for a cave. Couldn’t find nothing.

  Dave still wasn’t satisfied. “Bush is so thick back there,” he says, “you’d never know if you missed some crack in the rock someplace with brush hanging over it that a person could slide into.”

  We’d all help keeping track of Jenny. We’d mention, “Jenny’s with Meghan.” Or, “I just seen Jenny. She’s right there on the dock with Al.” Or, “Jenny’s in the kitchen. They’re hulling berries.”

  It was like there was a storm coming.

  The shrink still said that Jenny was using the cave stories to work through her issues. But nobody could think where she was getting them pictures from. And me, I was sure that we were in for something. Just even to look at that dog of Josie’s pacing around.

  “For frig’s sakes, lay down!” And he’d lay down for a half second.

  Jenny kept drawing pictures. She would not stay home.

  Dave says, “What are we going to do? We can’t tie her up.”

  We tried grounding her. Taking away treats. Yelling at her. Reasoning with her. We explained to her what all could happen to a little girl by herself out in the bush. Sent her to her room. Locked her in once and she got out on the shed roof and climbed down the apple tree. Nothing worked. The kid kept sneaking off.

  Then the storm broke. The day come when we could not find Jenny. Nobody’d saw her for a half hour. Not with Meghan? Not with Al? Not with Dave? Jan?

  We hunted high and low. We shouted ourself hoarse. No answer. Everybody helped. We run along all the paths back and forth to our place and the boathouse and the dock and everywheres. Guests started helping. Al went all along the shore in a boat. No Jenny.

  I don’t know if yous have ever lost a kid? Oh my God! You feel your stomach drop, eh, and your heart’s just banging. Your mind’s racing. She’s drowned. She’s kidnapped. She’s run over on the highway. She’s lost in the woods. You don’t know which way to run.

  When we’d looked everywheres, we called the police. They brought dogs.

  Back north here, that’s a mean kind of bush to try and run through. It’s all great big rocks that are right in front of you, ten, twenty foot high, like cliffs. There’s blackberry canes that’ll tear your skin like fish hooks. There’s deer flies, mosquitoes thick as smoke. The ground’s all roots and bumps. You trip and you get bit and you’ve got to scramble and climb and hunt for a way around or over or through. There’s swamps. There’s bears.

  So there’s me, sweat running off me. I’m filthy, panting, cut, my shirt’s got a big rip I’m holding shut, pushing on the pain in my side, as I run through the bush with this one policeman. I get whipped in the face with a branch. The bloodhound, he’s pulling out ahead on his leash, nose to the ground.

  Adrenaline is quite the drug, eh? I’m sailing over logs. I’m climbing over rocks. And I still got wind for yelling. Yelling and yelling, “Jenny! Jenny!”

  Dog took off faster. Me and the cop puffing behind.

  We come to the edge of a swamp. The cop, he stood there looking around. Swatted a bug on his neck. Dog was flummoxed. We were puffing and panting.

  In the one direction, the swamp opened out into a big beaver pond. The other way was a solid wall of bush.

  I yelled for Jenny. There was a bit of echo. Then quiet.

  We seen, stepping out of the bush, my father.

  43.

  YOU KNOW, I have worked awful hard on knowing real from not real. I’d have to say that that there particular minute was the hardest to tell. Seemed like a bad dream, but there was Dad. Dad was standing there, knee deep in weeds, holding Jenny’s rabbit by the ears.

  The dog, he took a leap, run right past the old man, dove into the tall brush. Me and the cop went scrambling after the dog, and it brought us straight to Jenny. I grabbed her to me. Relief pouring over me like out of a busted pipe.

  I started to call Dave on the cell. Couldn’t. “Dial Dave.” I held the phone out to Jenny.

  She was that awful calm. I hear her regular voice. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

  Him, loud with a question. “In the cave,” she says, “with the cave man.”

  A cave man holding a rabbit by the ears.

  I grabbed the phone. “She was with my—”

  Then it really hit me. My father!

  “With who?” Dave’s voice is coming out of the phone.

  Dave’s asking questions. Cop is talking to Dad. Dad’s standing there, large as life, with his lumpy chin. Jenny’s talking to me.

  There’s a crow sitting still in the air, but the ground is sailing under it. The trees are sliding away from the crow.

  I sit down on the ground. The ground is moving. I put my head between my knees. Have to hurl. Stick my face in a bush.

  The cop and Dad are standing over me.

  “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  The cop’s got a hold of Dad, by one arm. The rabbit’s still hanging there from his other hand.

  Wipe my mouth on a leaf. Sit there, holding on to a root. Sky still sliding, with them two men in front of it. Throat burning. I’m moving away from them, riding on the ground.

  Jenny’s busy talking to Dave on the phone.

  Dad looks like a bum. I don’t like him standing up in the sky like that. The way Josie said. The cave man in the sky with the rabbit.

  So I try to stand up, but the ground sails off at an angle, like a circus ride. I give up on the standing. Sit back down in the scratchy weeds. Mosquito and my heart in my ear.

  “Ma’am?” The cop’s trying to get through to me.

  The old man hasn’t said one word.

  My head buzzing in circles with a deer fly.

  “Can you identify this man?”

  I look at him. I wish I would say something.

  Don’t know what all happened after that. Cop must’ve called the other cops. I just sat there, stupid. I remember looking at a big blue dragonfly, seeing what beautiful green glass eyes it had on it.

  Jenny, she curled up beside me. She kept patting my forearm with her soft fingers.

  If yous had asked me right then, I would’v
e told yous there was zero hope on this planet. Nobody couldn’t escape nothing. Didn’t matter what I’d did. Didn’t matter how far I’d went or what I’d tried for. Here was the very exact same goddamned old man, hanging over us! Might just as well have left Jenny right where she was, let Sandra raise her. She wouldn’t have did nothing to keep her from getting screwed by her grandfather. I hadn’t neither. For all the good it had did to bring her here! All our luck. All our work. He found us just the same. It was like Jenny’s fate found her, just as sure as sure. And if that’s the way she goes, what is the frigging use of ever getting up in the morning?

  That’s what I thought, sitting in the rough weeds, looking in the glass green eye of a bug.

  Dave showed up, running. Sally right behind him. They squatted down, grabbed us. My face went looking for Dave’s dent in the chest. I felt the ground slow down.

  Dave and Sally helped us up. I’m clutching Jenny.

  So there we are, standing in the bush.

  I thought, Jesus. I thought, I wish it was a million years ago and we were starting over, right here. We could take and put that old man out of his misery. Smack him over the head with a rock big enough to make a clean job.

  Sally is on the phone to Marg and Tammy. The cop over there somewheres, faint voice asking me whether I can identify this man. And, “Do you want to press charges?”

  Dave said we sure as hell did.

  Jenny was took to the hospital and my old man to jail. Police wanted to hold the old man, and we sure wanted them to. But nobody knew what to charge him with.

  Doctor couldn’t find no injuries on Jenny or traces of fluids on either one of them.

  Jenny wouldn’t say nothing. Police child worker talked to her. Nobody could get her to say nothing but that he showed her the cave. The rabbit man knows about the fires that are under the lake and the way to the world above.

  Dave talked to her. I talked to her. Marg took a try. Nothing.

  “The beaver people take kids’ baby teeth for luck.” That’s all she’d say. Legend stuff. Nothing about Dad.