The Night Watch
Page 34
Butane candles hissed softly overhead. Once each year, in the spring, she stayed up through the night to do this. She hummed softly as she worked, occasionally sipping from a cup of blackberry tea. Tree trunks shadowed in brown and black; the hanging green-gold film of morning sunlight. The stillness of the wood, rendered in tiny, particular strokes of her 00 brush. An old-fashioned painting, this, without her current flash; not lit, slashed and smoldering with her beloved reds.
Nick she placed near the edge of the canvas, standing on a path in the morning. Waiting. Lines of frost in his dark hair. Overhead, unseen among the branches, a Steller’s jay, just leaving her perch, black wings showing brilliant blue where the light touched them.
Nick, standing on the dark path. The bright bird in flight. Toward him? Away?
The long wood poured between them, like a river.
These were her parents.
Lark finished the painting and drank her tea. When dawn came, she walked out of Cedar House to a certain place in the Forest. She brought the painting with her. Here, in a little pit made of stones, she built a fire. Dried moss and cedar needles for kindling, small twigs on top in a careful pattern, then larger sticks and two useful logs. When the fire was ready she put the painting on top.
It was a beautiful morning, clear and dry. The huckleberry bushes had put out their fine lace of green leaf. Birds bustled, flitting overhead and airing their opinions. Lark found herself humming again.
Kneeling, she struck a long match and touched the kindling with it, here and here and here, and the match gave each time its gift of light. Dry orange moss hissed and burned. White flame skipped up a ladder of spruce and cedar needles, crackling. Lark blew softly on the fire. Bigger sticks caught. Light danced and heat trembled from the fire’s red, red heart. Smoke began to pour around the edges of her painting. Dark stains flowered on its surface, spreading over the trees, and the jay, and her father on the path.
Then the canvas pulled apart, and fire came through it like a revelation.
Acknowledgments
As always, my profoundest gratitude to Christine, who was the first to name the heart of this book, and to Philip, who led me, over waffles at a Richmond pancake house, to the discovery of Chinatown’s desires, and many other things. Heartfelt thanks to Susan Allison for making me do it all over from the beginning. Also, thanks to Sean Russell for many excellent suggestions, and for introducing me to David Hinton’s incomparable translations of the poetry of Tu Fu. Tom Phinney, Maureen McHugh, Michael Stearns, Karin Fuog, and Bruce Rogers all weighed in with much-needed insight at crucial times. Linda Nagata did the same at tremendous speed at the eleventh hour. I owe them all.
This book is dedicated to the cities of Edmonton and Vancouver, and to my grandfather, A. G. Thornton.