She Felt No Pain

by Lou Allin

  Holly was familiar with the styles of the decades from Norman’s old Life magazines. “Sounds like you got everything. There weren’t really any other personal belongings.” She saw no reason to mention the 007 pencil case. Sad evidence of a soul.

  She heard Pirjo pause and the paper rustle. “Judy was a more common name once. I must know six or seven from my older sister’s friends. Anyway, cause of death was an overdose? That’s not going to get him much sympathy.”

  “Heroin adulterated with a very strong pain medication. Like a loaded gun.”

  Pirjo gave a shivering sound. “I hate what’s happening to our community. This kind of thing used to be confined to Vancouver. Is this called progress?”

  “I hear you. Look at the crystal meth epidemic. Still, it would be worse if a younger person were involved. This individual had a long history of addiction. It was probably a matter of time.”

  “We can’t hide the truth. Maybe this brings home to young people that the drug scene isn’t glamourous, but deadly.” Pirjo paused. “That could be a good approach for another story.”

  An award-winning journalist, Pirjo knew all the angles. She was a one-woman crusade and didn’t mind rattling cages.

  *

  When Holly got home just after six, her father was already in the kitchen, a good sign that things were stuttering toward normal. Tony Orlando and Dawn were tying a yellow ribbon. In the yard corner, a small oak tree bore that trademark. Vietnam, the Gulf, Afghanistan, now Gaza again, did anything ever change in the outside world? The smell of baking bread met her nose and reminded her that she’d had only a chocolate milk for lunch.

  “I checked that pencil case. More like seventy-five dollars. Circa 1972. If you’re thinking of my birthday, I’d rather have a Victorian chocolate box from the Boer War. 1900. My collection from the Oughts needs work.”

  “Thanks for the research.” She noted that he moved slowly but more easily. Marilyn’s miracle was worth a hundred dollars. “I’m glad to see you up and around.”

  “Package arrived for you, sweetie. It came UPS. I left it on the cube seat in the foyer.”

  “Funny. I didn’t order anything.” At one time, getting presents from her mother had been a regular occurrence—when Bonnie was visiting remote communities, some accessed only by boat. That shawl with a turtle pattern. She’d been cramming for a math final, and her gratitude was lukewarm at seventeen. Only years later did she admire the subtleties of the colours and appreciate how it warmed her shoulders on cold nights outside in the fall looking at the sky, trying to find Jupiter to the south. Her mother had traced Orion’s belt as she pointed out one of the brightest constellations. Coming up behind them in a rare moment of family warmth, her father put his hands on their shoulders as he quoted Bette Davis in Now Voyager. “Don’t ask for the moon. We have the stars.” One was Hollywood, the other her heritage. If she could return to being a teenager, she’d show her mother how much she loved and respected her, but that wisdom came with age or with a tragically premature loss.

  After changing into sweat-suit civvies, Holly came down the stairs and hefted the large, light parcel, taking it into the kitchen, accepting with a managed smile a brimming glass of her father’s homemade fuchsia merlot, and sitting at the table. Glimmering in silver on the strait was a small cruise ship, and she picked up a set of binoculars, amused that passengers might be staring at her like zoo visitors. What did this house look like? What thoughts entertained them as they relaxed on deck chairs, sipping margaritas and hoping to catch a glimpse of a whale?

  Her father, wearing his George Jefferson apron, put his hands on his hips and stretched backwards. “I’m nearly eighty-five, no, eighty-seven per cent normal. I was embarrassed at first, but Marilyn explained that deep tissue massage applies greater pressure than conventional relaxation techniques. It can be used to release trapped nerves and address damaged muscle tissue. Do you know I’m unbalanced?”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t run in the family.”

  “Run in the…” He broke out in a forty-carat grin. “You kidder, you. Marilyn is a rebalancer. The Osho system was developed over twenty years ago in India to put the body in tune with the emotional, energetic and spiritual aspects. And she uses oil of bergamot and lavender to provide helpful sensory stimuli. Speaking of stimuli, how’s the wine? I gave it an extra fortnight. Should be choice.” He took a large draught and wiped his mouth with a serviette.

  Better not discourage him in this upswing. “Even better than the chardonnay.” Not a lie. Both wines were sour enough to curdle all the way down the pipe, but at four dollars a bottle, the spirits flowed. “Anyway, I wonder what this package is.”

  “Don’t look at me. You’re not the birthday girl.” Holly was an even-tempered Libra, the scale signifying her profession. Her mother was a Gemini and her father an Aries. An ugly combination. Even in the Chinese system, they were rooster and monkey, notorious bickerers. The stars had conjoined against them in more than one culture. Her father pulled a crusty loaf out of the oven and placed it on the tile counter, tapping its toasty perfection for the hollow sound.

  With a mixture of curiosity and suspicion, she examined the postmark on the brown-paper package with shaky block lettering: YOUBOU, BC. She looked up with surprise and guilt, a flush of shame spreading from her breastbone. “It’s Great Auntie Stella Rice.” The kindly Coastal Salish princess, now in her eighties, had raised Holly’s mother when her own sister had died far too young from resurgent tuberculosis in the former logging community. A year before that, Bonnie’s father had suffocated when a bulldozer had rolled on him during the stump removal and re-seeding of a clear cut on the north side of the Cowichan Valley. In their tightly-knit community, someone always came forward to raise a child. And if anyone under fifty needed a rap on the head from Stella’s cane, she accommodated.

  Holly’s father tightened his narrow lips, and a muscle twitched in his lean jaw. Quiet but resolute, the native side of the family had cut all ties with him when her mother had disappeared. They hadn’t approved of her marrying outside of her people, much less a professor with his head in the clouds. His rapture with popular culture they found debased and trivial, as had Bonnie when the first blush of love had paled. “You sent her a Christmas card telling her you were living here now, didn’t you? It’s important… to keep in touch with family. Bonnie would have…they’re good people..even if they don’t…” His voice sputtered out of energy, and like a dog making distracting gestures, he started to mix sauces for the beef fondue, a jar of mayo at his side along with chopped garlic and a blender of hollandaise redolent of lemon.

  Holly grabbed a knife to open the box. Removing its contents from a tissue-paper wrapping, she gasped in delight. On her little farm, Stella raised goats and spun her own yarn for traditional Cowichan weaving and knitting. She was never without sets of needles in her purse and had turned out socks, hats, and scarves for Holly in sizes baby to adult. Holly’s visits to the reserve had tapered when Bonnie’s activism had started taking her all over the island and stopped altogether when Holly had left for university. And here was Stella reaching out to her. It was only a few hours to Youbou. Why hadn’t she made time for a visit? She didn’t deserve this present.

  She unwrapped a thick cowled sweater in undyed wool with a charming pattern of a deer amid cloven-hoof prints. “This is lovely,” Holly said, feeling the woman’s arms embrace her as she tried it on. “This white contrast to the browns and tans—I’ve never seen it before.” She touched the soft fabric to her cheek.

  Norman gave an approving nod, his sleek eyebrows rising as his voice softened, taking his absent wife’s role. “The deer is your totem. Remember what your mother said about its powers when she took you camping at Nitinat Lake on that spirit quest. You were so unhappy when she told you that you didn’t get to choose. It chose you.”

  “I wanted a bear or a cougar and pouted for a week. Guess I wasn’t the easiest kid, and lucky a chipmunk didn’t find me.” The
n she read the enclosed card, the writing spidery but exact. “She says she’ll be in Sooke the 20th. Hey, that’s this weekend. She’s coming down by bus to talk to a local weaver about selling her wares at Duncan during the International Indigenous Games in August.”

  “Paper said that they’re expecting over twenty thousand people. The city will be jammed and pretty damn hot at that time of year.” Norman cleared his throat and began portioning out the sauces in custard cups. “About this weekend, she’s welcome to stay here if she—”

  ”That’s generous, Dad, but it wouldn’t be a good idea. Stella’s made it clear that she wants to meet me at the T’souke reserve down at the harbour. She’ll be staying with an old friend.” Holly turned to the window and forced the last swallow of wine, a weight of unfulfilled responsibilities over her head. This fall it would be another year that Bonnie Martin had been gone. Yet there was no grave, no scattered ashes, nothing but a lack of even questions.

  Coming back in touch with her mother’s side of the family brought the deep ache back to the surface, where it asked for attention. All the time Holly had been learning her trade at her first postings, she’d thought about applying her new talents and resources to finding out what had happened that terrible week. Since returning last year, she’d made slim progress. There had been contact with an old social worker boyfriend of Bonnie’s, the stunning news, confirmed in a letter, that she had been ready to leave Norman once Holly was in university. A silver amulet of Raven which had turned up at a nearby thrift shop might have been her mother’s, yet it had surfaced long after her disappearance. Holly had been given a chance to read the case records in Sooke a few months ago, but when she tried to talk to an inspector in West Shore, he’d told her that the case was very cold. All the leads had been traced years ago, and he disputed the ownership of the amulet. “You’re too personally involved, a bad mix. Doctors shouldn’t operate on their own families,” he had said to her, rudely checking his watch and picking up another file. “Give it a rest. People often wait years to come out of the woodwork.” Was that supposed to be a consolation?

  She had stuck out her jaw and announced that any personal time she had would be dedicated to solving the mystery. “If you think I’m waiting for a deathbed confession, think again,” she had said, turning on her heel. “What if it had involved your mother?”

  Lately the Times Colonist had been running a cold case series. She’d called the journalist in charge, but the series was full for the time being. “Call me in six months,” he’d said. “We’re getting a lot of good press.”

  After dinner, Holly cleaned up. Norman came from the video room, rubbing his hands. “How about a game of Pong? I can set it up on the computer. Then the next Godfather? Or did you bring home work for tonight?”

  “Crime themes are too close to home.” When she saw his surprised look, she added, “Close to my job, that is. Let’s do The Odd Couple. I need a laugh.” Though Bonnie was never far from their thoughts, discussing her on a regular basis would have been too painful. She would have wanted life to go on. But how could it without any resolution?

  Just before she turned in at eleven, Holly went to her deck off the master suite to find Venus rising across the strait. No streetlights clouded the view, no fortifications obscured the sky. The glow flickering over the eastern hills was the lights of Sooke, but ahead the firmament was black as her mother’s eyes. From her childhood Holly recalled the storms those eyes held when her mother’s work brought frustration, when Norman persisted in his chatter about his latest period toy or recipe, or when Holly had put her life in peril and nearly drowned at Mystic Beach trying out a surfboard. How she missed the warmth they held when Bonnie had embraced her daughter and planted butterfly kisses on her cheek. When had she grown too old for that, eleven?

  “Your love of the natural world of plants and animals came from my side, your academic pursuits came from your father. I suppose you’re going to teach in a university like he does or do research.” She chucked her teenaged daughter under the chin.

  “Come on, Mom. That’s so boring. I want to be a ranger and work in a park. Maybe on the mainland. Anyway, you went into law,” Holly would say, setting aside her insect collection for Grade Ten biology. She’d just mounted a stunning sheep moth and had been admiring the black Hebraic markings on its delicate pink and ochre wings. “You could have been defending the innocent. Making the big bucks, too. Like on television.”

  A brief smile flickered across her mother’s face, revealing her wry sense of humour. “You’re very dramatic, my dear. Like me. It’s the devil’s profession, but I found a good use for it. Fight evil with its own methods and cut it no slack. Turning the other cheek only encourages bullies. Now I have a mission, not only for women but for my own people. And for yours, little freckle pelt.”

  Holly took a quail feather and marked a page in the Trees and Plants of Coastal British Columbia that her mother had given her for her birthday. “Are you saying that you want me to be an activist? An environmentalist?” Her parents had never pressured her. Their trust in her to make the right decisions was precious.

  “Use your gifts. I expect you to set and achieve your goals on your own, wherever they lead. But what an impetuous girl. Not patient, but a watcher like the deer. A creature of instinct and grace, not a predator.” Bonnie shook her head in mock frustration, retying her shining ebony hair in a ponytail.

  Now Holly looked to the wall at the deer mask her “Uncle” Silas Seaweed, Bonnie’s childhood friend, had sent her when she was ten. “No deer were harmed…” he had told her when she worried about the animal’s fate. “The buck left us his antlers one spring so that he could grow newer, stronger ones.” The mask had a human face, black painted hair with cedar bark strips falling down on each side. Shiny golden brows stood over an eye mask of red, streaks falling like tears of flame and a broad red mouth. In a curious feature, it looked behind her as if “watching her back”.

  “Where are you, Mom? Why didn’t your totem protect you? The cougar is strong,” she whispered again as she had many nights. But even bears and cougars were powerless over some evils. Her mother would never have abandoned her. A tear sneaked down her hot cheek. “I’m not crying. I…am…not.” She blinked away the traitorous moisture and flicked off the light as she heard her father’s door close.

  SIX

  You have grown tall, girl. You are a woman now,” said the venerable Stella Rice, her black-olive eyes creasing in joy as she enveloped Holly in a powerful hug that scooped her up. She packed power into her five feet. “You have been such a stranger. Children must not stay away so long. Were you good, or should I get my applewood switch?” Stella had threatened, but she’d never applied the rod. One hot glance of her eyes stung more than a thousand words or a hundred blows.

  “Sorry,Auntie Stella. I was in university, and then posted across the country. But I’m back now.” With the cool morning and a fog rising, Holly had worn the sweater. “Thank you for this gift. What beautiful patterns. This wool is so soft. Is it a different breed of goat?” Sometimes the weavers worked in feathers, bark, or other natural sources for colour and interest. A hundred and fifty years before, the arrival of the Hudson Bay blankets had eclipsed the weaving industry, and drab grey machine product had replaced the works of art. Now artisans were reviving their craft.

  Stella let a wisp of a smile crack her broad mahogany face. Large, square red glasses magnified her eyes. Her totem, the owl, had been well chosen. “You have heard of the Salish wool dog? They are very small, like coyote.”

  “My mother told me. But I thought they were extinct by World War II.” Holly felt the warmth of family love. How quickly they returned to the familiar comfort. It was as if they had never parted, and yet Stella moved a bit slower than last time.

  “A new secret for you. My cousin’s cousin on Tzartus Island had a pack his family had kept separate for generations to protect the line. I took the ferry from Port Alberni for a clan gathering there
this year. Because of my knitting, I was allowed to take a pup. So that she doesn’t mate with our local dogs, she will soon be spayed. I call her Puq, which means white.” Stella formed the words with the trademark glottal sounds that Holly couldn’t reproduce.

  “Maybe when I’m in the Cowichan Valley, I can see her.”

  “Maybe is not a strong promise word. I expect you very soon.” Stella tapped her temple. “This I know.”

  They sat in rocking chairs on the porch of Mary Wren’s small cedar-shake cabin on the T’souke reserve. In mid June’s cool mornings, a cedar fire in the wood stove kept off the chill. A grassy expanse merged with the pebble beach, now at low tide, the flats dark grey and murky with the sea tang. Across the Sooke basin were the majestic, smoky hills of East Sooke, where the Martins had once lived deep in the great dark woods. Holly sipped aromatic camomile tea and nibbled on bannock heaped with purple salal jam. As usual, Stella’s strong and talented hands worked her knitting. “I tried to visit you my first summer in university, but you were in Northern Alberta staying with your grandson. Wasn’t he working on the tar sands project?”

  “His first job, and his first baby. The young need the wisdom of the old. Thus it has been and shall be.” Stella’s eyes crinkled, every wrinkle earned in a hardworking time on earth. She must be closing in on seventy-five, nearly as round as she was tall. Her thick silver hair was gathered in two great braids down her back, tied in red ribbons, her signature colour. The cotton dress was plain as a nun’s habit but had complex embroidery depicting a thunderbird. On a side table lay the conical reed hat of the Salish. Mary quietly sat at her loom inside, glancing up now and then with a friendly smile. A small yellow bird trilled from a gilded cage on the table. The cage was open, yet it never emerged.

  “You used to come sit on the sheepskin with me by the fire, and I told you the old stories, like I told your mother.” Stella took Holly’s head in her hands and pursed her lips with the cool assessment that had made her a leading elder. “You look some like your father. That blond man. Your hair is lighter than your mother’s. But the nose and mouth are hers. As for what lies inside you, I wonder if your heart remembers the first and most important legend.” The test had arrived.