Bone Coulee

by Larry Warwaruk

  “What are you doing, Mother?”

  “Packing. What does it look like?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Glen is coming to get me for Charlotte’s drama class. They are writing their own play, and she wants me to talk to her kids. They want ideas to come up with topics. Finally I have a plan, Angela. Finally, a plan!”

  • Chapter 22 •

  If Mac and his friends had any idea of Roseanna’s plan, they’d have good reason to worry. But just the fact that she’s here living in Duncan is enough to raise Pete’s suspicions.

  They troop down Mac’s basement stairs for their regular Monday morning game of pool. Nick racks the balls, and Sid breaks. Mac never tires of hearing the clack on the strike of the cue ball exploding the triangle of numbered balls in all directions. Abner circles the table, cue in one hand shaking, his other hand shaking in his pocket for his pea, checking yet another time for its number, shaking it back into his pocket, and then eyeballing the table to locate his numbered ball. He steadies all he can to aim his cue. For all the Mondays over the years, as many times as his cue has lurched forward beyond his control, he’s never ripped the cloth.

  “Out for a picnic yesterday?” Pete asks Mac.

  “You keeping track?”

  “Somebody has to. I don’t like it, Mac.”

  “That buffalo skull Mac bought at the sale,” Abner says. “They took it out and buried it.”

  “Keep your nose on your cue ball,” Mac says.

  “Just what are they up to?” Pete says. “You know as well as I do how a young trick like that can take advantage of a man. And what’s the old lady hanging around town for?”

  Abner shoots, his cue just glancing off the side of the cue ball and gouging into the cloth.

  “Not enough chalk on the tip,” he says. “Or else your chalk is no good. A little glue should fix up that bit of a rip.”

  “If you’d keep your nose glued to your own business,” Mac says.

  “I don’t like it,” Pete says. “They’ve got lawyers dragging up all kinds of bogus charges, and there’s no limit to how far back they go.”

  “Statute of limitations,” Jeepers says.

  “Now this Smythe-Crothers dame. She gets wind of it, we’re in trouble. Real trouble.”

  “Remember,” Sid says, “We don’t know what happened. The court record will prove that if the story ever does happen to surface. It was dark and everybody was drunk. Everybody clubbing everybody else.”

  “The game,” Mac says. “It’s your shot, Pete. We are down here to play pool, not hold court. No one’s going to jail.”

  “Not me,” Jeepers says.

  “Look,” Mac says. “There has been no mention of anything.”

  “Just what were you doing with her down there?” Pete asks.

  “Like Abner said, burying a buffalo skull.”

  “Sounds like a fun time,” Nick says.

  “I still don’t like it,” Pete says. “This morning I saw the old lady heading out of town with her son, the guy who’s trying to negotiate land deals.”

  “I don’t know,” Sid says. “He seems decent enough.”

  “I didn’t club anybody,” Jeepers says. “I didn’t even pick up a fence post.”

  • Chapter 23 •

  While the pool players fret in Mac’s basement, Angela is on her way to the Three Crows First Nation. Glen phoned to say that their mother’s plan has Charlotte in a dilemma, and she needs some expert help. One university class in creative drama doesn’t make Angela much of an expert, but at least she can help to instill some common sense in her mother. White Ballplayers Murder Indian Home-run Hitter might not be the most appropriate title to enter into a high-school theatre festival.

  The brand-new Three Crows School is an orange-coloured brick building with two white designer stripes. It has a tall centre cone with skylights and three smaller cones like tipis. Angela walks along red tiles patterned in converging circles on her way to the gymnasium and Charlotte’s drama class.

  Her students are sitting in a circle on the gym floor.

  “Your mother’s unpredictable,” Charlotte says. “I told her about the Métis story we’ve been working on all month, and she told us about your kokum’s willow spoon stirring soup the night your uncle was killed.”

  “Hi, Auntie!” River says from where she’s sitting in the circle. “I’m playing Kokum Anne-Marie when she was only eight years old.”

  “Where is your Kokum Roseanna?”

  “Having a nap, I think,” River says. “Is Kokum at home, Mom?”

  “Yes, she’s having a nap. She might be over later.”

  Angela’s beginning to wonder why she had to reschedule her willow-craft class to come all this way. Charlotte seems to have everything under control. But since she’s here, she should at least try to make the trip worthwhile.

  “You’re going to show me some scenes?”

  “See what you think,” Charlotte says. “Places, everyone.”

  The gym lights dim, and then slowly the stage lights rise to the early morning chirping of birds. A solitary black box sits at centre stage. Five actors appear, one of them, River, who wipes sleep from her eyes. Two of the players mime riding on horseback, while River and the other two get seated on the box. Charlotte’s son, Tommy, mimes the cracking of a whip, and he holds his hands forward as if hanging onto reins.

  “It was better before the railway came,” Tommy says. “We made a decent living hauling freight with our Red River carts. Before the fighting at Batoche we lived well at Round Prairie.”

  “Papa,” River says, “yesterday you told the border man that we are French.”

  “After the English hanged our Louis Riel, we are better off to be French than to be Métis.”

  “Can we be Cree? Like Mama?”

  “Better to be Indian than Métis,” Tommy says.

  The two on horseback move across the stage and return.

  “We have to cross the water, Papa,” one of them says.

  Charlotte raises both her hands. “Okay,” she says. “Break, but be ready to start again.”

  “They’re really good!” Angela says.

  “But here’s where we don’t know what to do. We can’t very well use Glen’s cart and have them take the wheels off to make it look like they’re floating across a river.”

  “What if you change the box?” Angela says. “Make it higher than it is wide.”

  “The Red River carts were quite high.”

  “Then, when you want to remove the wheels, have the boys mime that, and in the process turn the box on its side. Now it’s lower, so it looks as if the wheels are off.”

  “And the family rafts across the river, right?” Charlotte says. “The boys can mime paddles. What about the horses? The boys were riding horses. Do they swim across?”

  “Have the boys mime that too,” Angela says. “Have them tie the horses’ reins to the raft. I think that’s what the Métis carters must have done. Anyway, we can ask the Elders.”

  “That should work,” Charlotte says. “Okay, everybody. Back on. Let’s do the coulee scene.”

  The lights dim to dusk. The actors again mime the cart’s movement across the prairie. The riders go forth again, this time separately, and they return separately.

  “A deep coulee ahead of us,” the first one says. “Too steep to get down.”

  The second rider appears. “Follow me,” he says. “We can enter the valley from the south end.”

  Coyotes yip, ravens croak, crows caw. A cougar screams, and Papa and the boys mime the settling down of the spooked horses. By now the cart is in the coulee.

  “Many have camped here,” Mama says from the back of the cart. “There are many tipi rings.”

  “And many buffalo bones,” Papa says. “We will build a cabin and live right here.”

  Roseanna wheels into the gym, and she shouts as loudly as her weakened lungs will allow: “I thought of just the thing! We can paint th
e killers’ faces white, and have them beat on Thomas with baseball bats!”

  • Chapter 24 •

  Roseanna doesn’t get her way. The official opening of the Dream catcher Boutique is on the same day as Esther’s son’s funeral, so Angela’s too concerned with this conflict to be haggling with her mother over a school play. Rather than brood over this, Roseanna fries bannock. Sprinkles it with crystals of sugar and places several pieces in one of Angela’s baskets with paper towel and a jar of saskatoon jam, takes it across the lane to Esther’s.

  Mac Chorniak is already there with a carton of Tim Horton’s donuts and a box of McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets for Esther’s dog. He’d been to Saskatoon the day before to buy a pair of dress shoes. He talks, but Roseanna sits and listens, just as if she isn’t there.

  “The plane trip went okay?” Mac asks.

  “Cameron’s friends met me at the airport. They were nice to me, Mac. Real gentlemen.”

  “You’re glad you went?”

  “To be with my son when he died. That’s hard, Mac. I wasn’t at all sure that I could hold up. I don’t know what I would have done were it not for his friends. The business with the crematorium, and getting me back to the airport.”

  “I can well imagine it wasn’t easy.”

  “The funeral won’t interfere with the grand opening of Darlene’s shop, will it? That’s this morning, and the funeral’s not till two this afternoon.”

  “Not at all,” Mac says.

  “I have something to ask of you, Mac. If you don’t mind.”

  The look in Esther’s eyes tells him what’s coming. He was afraid of this; he wouldn’t mind doing anything else…ushering, handing out funeral cards, pallbearing, even sitting up all night for an old-fashioned wake, like he remembers when his grandfather died. But it’s none of these that Esther wants.

  “Would you mind saying a few words? You brought me such comfort at Bill’s funeral.”

  How can Mac refuse? But this eulogy won’t be nearly as easy as the one he did for Bill. For Bill’s funeral, Mac had no end of stories to draw from. They had grown up together. Hunted and fished together. Borrowed tools and equipment from each other. Sat on boards together. But there is not much he knows about Cameron. Mac does know what people will have on their minds at the funeral.

  “I can do it, Esther.”

  “I should have asked you earlier, but there is so much arranging, and I’m all by myself, you know.”

  “You’re not alone, Esther. I’m here. Jen and Abner are here.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have Jen. She’s always been the strong one.”

  “Do you think Bridget will eat these Chicken McNuggets?”

  “Here, I’ll put some in her bowl.”

  The dog sniffs at them. Her stub tail vibrates, and her body goes stiff like a cat ready to pounce on a mouse. And then she licks each piece of chicken, as if making up her mind. Finally she takes one in her mouth and carries it to the living room.

  “She wants to eat in private this morning,” Esther says. “Or maybe, like me, she’s lost her appetite.”

  “I’d better get going,” Mac says. “The grand opening. I don’t suppose you’ll be going?”

  “I’d like to, if only to take my mind off things, but it wouldn’t, and I’d have to talk to people. That will be hard enough this afternoon.” Esther takes a jar from her fridge. “I made a pot of beef and barley soup yesterday and put it up in sealers. Not as tasty as what Peggy used to make, but…”

  “Now, Esther. You know as well as I that it was you gave her the recipe.”

  “I wish this day were done and gone.”

  “So much happening all at once, Esther. Worse yet, the Wildlife banquet’s on for tonight. You’d think they’d have postponed it.”

  “Just for a funeral?”

  “I guess not, and my grandson wants me to go. Some of the local hunters are bringing in the mounts of the trophy deer. Last fall Garth scored second in the province for junior rifle.”

  “You’d better go now,” Esther says, “if you want to dress up a little for the grand opening. Jane Smythe-Crothers will be there with her camera.”

  “And I’d better go now,” Roseanna says.

  “Oh yes. Thank you, Roseanna. For the pastry.”

  “May the Creator be with you today, Mrs. Rawling, especially when your son had to die so young.”

  Mac digs in his dresser drawer and pulls out a black tie. He’ll have to iron it. His mind is in a jumble, searching for what he’s going to say at the funeral. For weeks on end, nothing ever happens in Duncan. Now everything happens all at once. Rodeo this weekend. Saturday night fireworks, light show, country music. He’s been asked to sit up on the stage with the dignitaries. Did Jane Smythe-Crothers get to the Three Crows cemetery, and if she did, what did she find?

  He looks at himself in the mirror, wondering if he should shave now or wait until after lunch. He tries to remember what position Cameron played when Mac coached him in minor ball. Either second or third base. There might be something in one of Peggy’s scrapbooks, but he’d have to dig through the closets, or did they throw them out when they moved to town? He’s not dressing up just for Jane Smythe-Crothers to take his picture. Mac played a big part in the renovation, working with all that barnboard, so he should at least try to look presentable if she wants to ask him any questions.

  He hunts through the kitchen cupboards for the iron, then up on the shelf in the bedroom closet. Where in heaven’s name did he put it? The last time he used the iron was to melt solder to fix a broken handle on an enamelled tin cup he had found out in the coulee. It’s likely on his workbench in the garage.

  The cuckoo-clock chime of his doorbell rings. Mac comes out of the bedroom to find Abner standing in the kitchen.

  “Going to the grand opening?” he asks.

  “Just on my way,” Mac says.

  “Getting all dressed up?” Abner asks, pointing to the tie in Mac’s hand.

  “This?” Mac says. “Black tie’s for the funeral.”

  “Damn sad thing,” Abner says. “Especially when it’s family. Jen is beside herself trying to come up with things that might lighten Esther’s grief.”

  “It will take some time,” Mac says. “All we can do is show her that we care, and show her that we value Cameron. Do what we can to help her realize that his life was something more than what some people perceive; something more than just a life wasted.”

  Mac and Abner take a seat at the table that’s closest to the door. The barnboard looks good on the walls. In fact everything looks good. It’s funny how things have changed. It used to be that people wanted things new and better, but there have gotten to be so many things new and better that nowadays everybody’s chasing after things old. A yoke from a team of oxen rests on an oak vinegar barrel. Darlene found both yoke and barrel in a Saskatoon antique store. A rusted barn lantern hangs from a nail on the wall. Three of Angela’s willow armchairs make a semicircle facing onto a gas fireplace. A spray of her dried flowers is arranged in a willow basket that sits on the trunk hauled down from the loft of the Chorniak barn. Books written by Saskatchewan authors are displayed on the fireplace mantelpiece.

  Nick, Pete and Jeepers sit at a table that’s partially hidden behind the neck yoke. Their wives are at the table that’s closest to the coffee urns and glass-covered dessert bar. Sid stands beside the camera zooming in on Darlene, Angela and Jane, all three conversing from the willow armchairs. Roseanna sits in her wheelchair, dipping her straw in her cup of iced cappuccino. Pastor Huff and John Popoff hold on to the ends of a large red ribbon.

  “And now,” Jane Smythe-Crothers says into the camera, “the grand opening of Duncan’s Dream Catcher Boutique!”

  Sid steps forward. “As mayor of the Village of Duncan, I declare the Dream Catcher Boutique officially open.” He cuts the ribbon, and everyone claps.

  John Popoff steps up, holding on to his half of the red ribbon, and says, “th
e premier asked me to extend his best wishes, and he congratulates the community’s efforts towards the growth of rural Saskatchewan.”

  “And I too,” Eddy Huff says. “On behalf of the Saskatchewan Party and its leader, I applaud the entrepreneurial skills of Darlene Chorniak, farmer and rancher, and Angela Wilkie, Aboriginal artist. And let’s get the camera on Angela’s mother, Roseanna Wilkie. Yes, let us recognize our indigenous people, and let us support this boutique’s leadership in its display and merchandising of Native art.”

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” Jane says. “I’m talking with the owners, Darlene Chorniak and Angela Wilkie. As you can see from the decor, someone has certainly been blessed with a superabundance of ideas. As someone from Toronto, I had no idea about prairie culture, or for that matter, whether there was anything at all between Alberta and Manitoba. What these two women have done with this boutique is a touch of the prairie, to say the least.”

  Sid interjects: “Just one of REDA’s special projects.”

  “REDA?” Jane asks.

  “One of REDA’s projects: Entrepreneurial Outreach. As mayor, I’m Duncan’s representative on the Bad Hills Rural Economic Development Authority. REDA provides the cash flow designed to kick-start the local economy.”

  Jane glances about the room. “You expect an increase in the tourist trade?” she asks Sid, “or are there enough local dollars?”

  “Sid has the lion’s share of the local dollars,” Nick pipes up from behind the vinegar barrel.

  “Angela does beautiful work,” Darlene says. “We still have to put up her charcoal sketches.”

  “I viewed some of Angela’s work on fair day,” Jane says. “Truly exceptional. And as I still can’t get over it…so mysteriously prairie. So here we have it. Darlene Chorniak and Angela Wilkie, entrepreneurship and art. Two women of the prairie.”

  “Prairie mystery?” Abner asks Mac. “Ever hear the likes of that before? She’ll end up having us all branded as some strange collection of people who have been out in the sun too long.”