Bone Coulee

by Larry Warwaruk

  She thinks the spirits are working already when Mac shows up right after lunch, driving his truck into the backyard. He’s prepared to take the owl out to Bone Coulee.

  “But why not just open the cage and let the blame thing fly away?” he asks Angela.

  “Ask Mother,” Angela says.

  “It would stay here,” says Roseanna. “That’s why. It thinks I’m its mother and the tree is home. It doesn’t even have to hunt for its food.”

  “So,” Angela suggests, “maybe if it’s back out in the coulee it will adapt to how it’s supposed to live.”

  “Things alive,” Mac says, “or things dead like the buffalo skull. You’d think we should all move out there.”

  “The duck should go back too,” says Roseanna.

  “Have you got an empty cardboard box?” Mac asks Angela. “Something we can put the owl in. And some duct tape?”

  “I’ll look in the house,” Angela says.

  Mac sits down on one of Angela’s willow-crafted lawn chairs. “Sure is warm for this late in the fall,” he tells Roseanna.

  “Indian Summer, eh?”

  “Good picnic weather.”

  “I wasn’t feeling too good when you went with Angela. I’m feeling really good now. I’m ready for a picnic before the snow comes. You could bring the duck to put it back.”

  “There are enough waterfowl out there as is,” Mac says.

  “Not a funny joke,” Roseanna says.

  A car door slams, and in a moment they hear the click of Jane Smythe-Crothers’s shoes on the walkway by the side of the house.

  “Esther told me that I’d find you here,” she tells Mac. “And Mrs. Wilkie. You two would make quite a pair for my documentary.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Don’t worry, Mac. But I would like to get your collection on film. Darlene mentioned something about a stone duck that you found.”

  “He’s stingy with the duck,” Roseanna says.

  Angela steps out of the porch with a cardboard box. She hands it to Mac, at the same time asking Jane, “What brings you to our backyard?” They give each other a hug.

  Mac takes the cardboard box into the cage. The owl hops from one branch to another, then soars past his head. It sways on a branch of the maple tree. Mac holds up the open box and shakes the limb, expecting rather foolishly that the bird might fall into it. Instead, the bird swoops, its healthier wing striking the box, and feathers fly. Mac grabs at the owl’s claws, only to get his hands bloodied. He will get his eyes scratched out before he’ll ever get the owl in the box.

  Angela opens the cage door, and in the scramble the bird flies out. Mac staggers out of the cage.

  “Stupid bird,” Roseanna says.

  The owl soars above them, back and forth across the yard, and then it flies off to perch high up on one of Esther Rawling’s maple trees. Esther’s dog scurries back and forth in her yard, yipping in a frenzy as only Esther’s dog can. The owl stares downward, and the dog scratches at the trunk of the tree, never ceasing its chatter. Moments later, the owl unfolds its wings, then sets them close again. Mac collapses on the willow-craft lawn chair, gasping for breath.

  • Chapter 30 •

  Tung Yee and Kwok Ming prepare a Chinese tea ceremony for Jane prior to her going back to Toronto. They invite Abner and Jen, with Tung Yee telling Abner, “But no politics at ceremony. NDP lost election. Nothing you can do about it now.”

  Angela and her mother are invited, along with all the Chorniaks and Esther.

  Jen and Esther come through the door dressed in the outfits they wore in the Duncan parade. Lee holds the door open for Angela to wheel in her mother, followed by Darlene and Garth, Mac and Abner, then the guest of honour, Jane.

  “Room for wheelchair, this end,” Tung Yee says. “Mrs. Wilkie. Everybody this table.”

  Kwok Ming enters from the kitchen, and as if officially to open the ceremony he carries a white tureen, resplendent in painted designs of red and blue berries, green leaves and golden fruit.

  “Corn soup,” Tung Yee says. “Yellow colour. Like good harvest. Good future. Lots of sunshine.”

  Every dish has its own message. Kwok Ming and Tung Yee explain the meanings.

  “Steamed fish. Big, big plate,” Kwok Ming says. “Too big. It means Jane will earn more money than she spends. That’s good luck.”

  “Deep-fried chicken,” Tung Yee says. “When a chicken finds food it cackles, and other chickens come running when they hear. It means that many others will share Jane’s happiness.”

  Shrimp piled high on a plate is meant to bring Jane many smiles. A large plate of squid, another food taken from the faraway sea, shows that no extravagance can be too great for such an honoured guest.

  A table is loaded with Chinese cookies and cakes, melon slices, Chinese pears and segments that look like grapefruit.

  “But not sour like grapefruit,” Tung Yee says. “Chinese fruit. Much sweeter.”

  “And now I prepare tea for ceremony,” Kwok Ming says.

  “Tea ceremony only for friends,” Tung Yee says.

  “Special tea from Fujian,” Kwok Ming says. A glass kettle simmers atop an ornate Chinese samovar with legs in the design of dragons. Beside it is a porcelain bowl with a concave lid filled with holes. A tray is loaded with red-orange clay cups and saucers. The saucers are rectangular and the cups are of two kinds, both of which are tiny, the one cup tall and narrow, the other squat.

  Kwok Ming puts tea leaves in a miniature teapot crafted from the same red-orange clay. Then from the glass kettle he trickles a little of the water on his fingers. “Make sure water not too boiling hot for tea,” he says, and then pours the water into the tiny pot. He places the cups on the perforated lid of the porcelain bowl as the tea steeps, and then he pours it over the cups.

  “Wash cups with tea,” Kwok Ming says. “Gives them aroma of tea.”

  He makes a second pot of tea, and while it steeps he pours hot water on the lid.

  “Seal the lid,” he says. “Keep tea warm.”

  He pours this second pot of tea into a larger grey teapot that has the same dragon designs as the samovar. He then makes another and adds it to the grey pot.

  Tung Yee sets the red-orange cups and saucers around the table, and Kwok Ming pours tea from the grey pot into each guest’s tall, narrow cup.

  “Now watch me,” Kwok Ming says. “Watch what I do.” He picks up his tall cup and holds it up to his nose.

  “Only for smelling,” he says. Then he places his squat cup over the narrow one and flips them over.

  “Now drink from other cup,” he says.

  “Chinese people always drink tea,” Tung Yee says. “Drink too much tea. Too much tea lowers blood pressure. Chinese people eat sweet cakes and many kinds fruit to bring blood pressure back up.”

  After the tea, and after everyone fills up even more on cakes and fruit, Jane asks if she can give a few words of thanks.

  “Okay,” Tung Yee says. “Okay, but later. More ceremony now. Not Chinese, but Saskatchewan. Jen and Esther have something.”

  “When we were little girls,” Jen says, “in the days of the one-room school, Esther and I sang at the Christmas concerts. In 2005, when Duncan celebrated Saskatchewan’s one hundredth birthday, we sang again.”

  “‘The Saskatchewan Song,’” Esther says.

  “So for tonight,” Jen says, “we thought it fitting to sing it once more. ‘Saskatchewan, We Love This Place’.”

  “We are many and we are one

  Lift your voice and sing Saskatchewan

  We are many and we are one

  ’Cause we love this place Saskatchewan….”

  When they finish singing, Esther gets a parcel that she had left by the door.

  “This is from all of us,” she says to Jane.

  “It’s a quilt,” Jane says, as she hefts the bulk and weight of the parcel. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “Well, let us see,” Roseanna says. “Why don’t
you open it?”

  Jane peels tape, one piece at a time, trying not to tear the paper. She takes off one layer of wrap, folding and pressing it together. She takes off the second wrapping, and sees the quilt.

  “Oh my!” she says. “The Wedding Ring!”

  “You can take a bit of Saskatchewan back to Toronto with you,” Esther says.

  “But it was…?”

  “Cameron doesn’t need it any more,” Esther says.

  “I couldn’t….”

  “Eh,” Roseanna says. “You shouldn’t refuse a gift.”

  “Of course. Oh, I’m so honoured, Esther. All of you. I’m so honoured. Kwok Ming and Tung Yee, for this banquet, and now this quilt. It will always make me think of you kind people in Duncan. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “Put away for now,” Tung Yee says. “Quilt is for sleeping.” She circles the table with a fresh pot of tea. “Anybody want more?”

  When finally they leave the café, Jane tells Mac that she wants a picture of him standing in front of his house. But first she’s going to the farm to take some pictures of the heritage barn, and then she’ll stop by on the way back.

  The nights come early this late in the year, and Mac wonders if Jane will have enough light to get good outside pictures. He sits on his front step, hearing the yip, yip of the dog in Esther’s backyard, likely barking at shadows. He waits out there a half hour, thinking about Jane, and then he goes inside to plug the kettle in for tea. Nothing fancy like Kwok Ming’s farewell ceremony, but a gesture just the same. She shouldn’t refuse to come into the house if it’s just for tea.

  When Jane gets back, she fusses with her camera, taking at least half a dozen pictures of Mac standing on his front step. She keeps insisting that she’s got to get the light right, and Mac worries that the tea will get cold. Finally satisfied, she hands the camera to Mac, getting him to take one of her that she can send him in the mail.

  “And if you are ever in Toronto…. Wait, I’ve something in the car.”

  She comes back to the step with her purse. “Here’s my business card. Should it so happen that you’re ever in Toronto, just call my number. And I have lots of room….”

  “Let’s go in and have that tea,” Mac says.

  • Chapter 31 •

  Two months ago when Mac and Abner saw the Wilkies out at the coulee, Mac felt that those women had no right to be snooping around without his permission. Abner didn’t agree, but that was simply his politics talking. But over the two months, they’ve had a reversal in attitudes. Abner thinks the Indian women are playing to Mac’s weaknesses, and Mac is taking them for a picnic in the coulee.

  During the two months he has learned that these women have a legitimate attachment to the coulee, and he has learned something about himself. He wants to share the coulee with them, in a private and peaceful sharing of nature. He wishes Jane were still here to join them, but he’s not as eager for a foursome with Abner, Jen and Esther. That will have to wait for another time.

  Yet he’s bothered by certain developments during the two months, and he shouldn’t dismiss Abner out of hand. He might have had a point in stating that the very presence of the Wilkies has triggered Mac’s guilty thoughts.

  And to trigger Mac’s guilty thoughts is exactly what Roseanna has in mind. She wants Mac Chorniak’s guilt exposed before she dies.

  “But no fancy bottle of wine,” she tells Angela. “Tell him orange juice.”

  They drive down to a flat piece of prairie near the bent and twisted ash trees. The wind is rising and the sky is starting to cloud over. Mac and Angela gather firewood, and Roseanna tests the suitability of the terrain for her wheelchair.

  When they have enough wood, Mac builds a fire while Angela rolls out dough for bannock. The weather’s not nearly what is was the last time they were down here, and they’ll be thankful for the heat from a fire.

  “We need sticks for the bannock,” Angela says.

  Mac cuts two chokecherry branches, stripping off the leaves and sharpening the ends.

  “Your mother need a stick?” Mac asks.

  “She will want to roast her own bannock. I know that,” Angela says.

  “Where did she go?”

  “I think she went into the trees,” Angela says. “I hope she’ll be okay with the wheelchair.”

  Mac cuts another stick for Roseanna, then gets chairs from the truck. He takes one out of its bag and unfolds it.

  “I brought lawn chairs. There’s one for me, and one for you,” he says as he pulls the second chair out of its bag.

  “Ayeee!” Roseanna comes wheeling out of the trees. “Ayeee! Ayeee!” She grabs her flannel blanket from her legs and flaps it in the air. “The bird chases me!” she says. “Shoo, you death bird. Shoo!”

  The owl hovers over them, flying in circles, phloopa, phloopa, then it veers towards the buffalo jump. It flies to the top, where it perches on an information sign left from the rodeo weekend. Roseanna pulls up to the fire, all the while keeping her eyes fixed on the owl.

  “Stay up there,” she says.

  “Why so excited, Mother? Haven’t you seen an owl before?”

  “The same one? And chasing me like I’m a field mouse?”

  “You probably just scared it,” Angela says. “Or maybe it is the same owl, and it thinks you are its mother. Didn’t you say that it thinks you are its mother? Here, roast some bannock. I’ll wrap the dough on a stick for you.”

  “A sign,” Roseanna says. “The time for you has come, Chorniak.” Her grey hair falls down her face, and through its strands her eyes reflect the fire. Her plastic oxygen lines bob on her chin.

  “It is death, Chorniak, and you know death. The owl knows death. Thomas’s death.” She pulls on the wheels of her chair, turning a half-circle to gaze up again at the owl.

  “You live a lie, Chorniak.”

  The owl’s head swivels back and forth with its eyes locked to its movement. Mac wonders if he’s imagining all this; or does this woman actually have some shaman connection with an owl. He recalls Shevchenko’s poetry on owls:

  The owls in glades call out their warnings,

  And ash trees creak and creak again….

  What does she know?

  Roseanna throws her blanket on the fire.

  “Mom! What are you doing?” Angela asks as she attempts to retrieve the blanket from the flames.

  “Leave it!” Roseanna says. “The campsite! Chorniak! Smell it! Smell burning cloth!”

  Mac stares at this horror of a woman, at the fire, at Angela, and then he connects with the smells of the burning blanket, the old kokum dragging the Indian from the fire.

  Going to paragraph #5 it shows the campsite.

  There is evidence that there were people

  there in the headlights of the car.

  There was a drinking party out there; there is

  no question about that; and this was amongst

  their own people in that area, in that tenting

  ground…

  “You are the girl…?”

  Roseanna coughs from the smoke. She pulls her wheelchair away from the fire, but still she coughs, over and over. Her oxygen tube pulls away from her nose, and Angela struggles to get the device back in place. The coughing finally subsides.

  “I am the ballplayer’s sister. Thomas’s sister. Remember the kewpie doll?”

  He remembers. Mostly he remembers the girl’s eyes, but right now her hair hangs over Roseanna’s eyes. He looks over at Angela and he wonders why he hadn’t noticed the resemblance before. He curses himself for thinking that all the pretty ones look the same.

  “Could be the car running over him that killed Thomas, the lawyer said. Eh? Thomas drunk. Eh? You know he wasn’t drunk. You know he wasn’t passed out on the ground. But you said nothing to answer the lawyer. You had no business to be there. Why did you come, anyway?”

  “For you and your sister.”

  “Squaws, eh? Smoked meat!”

  “That�
�s what we did call you back then. We did, Angela. We didn’t know any better, and we were drunk. But I didn’t do it.”

  “Nobody did, eh? Thomas knocked himself on the head with a post. How stupid do you think I am?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And that’s all you can say? You are sorry?”

  “What am I supposed to do? Report it to the Bad Hills Eagle?”

  “That would be a good start.”

  “Maybe something like that would resolve things,” Angela says. “I don’t think you’d have to worry about criminal charges. Not with the statute of limitations. And you can’t be charged twice for the same crime.”

  “What are you babbling?” Roseanna says. “I thought you studied art at university, not to be some fancy lawyer.”

  “I’m just telling him that he wouldn’t have to go to jail.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Mac says again.

  “How do you know you didn’t drive over him?”

  “I don’t.” He pauses, and then he says, “I’ll give you the duck.”

  “The duck?” Roseanna says. “Here’s your duck!”

  She takes the two pieces out of a plastic bag and throws them at Mac’s feet. “You thought you were such a lover boy to give me this kewpie doll, but see what I did with it? I chopped her in half with an axe!”

  “What do you want me to do?” Mac stares into the fire. He bends forward in his chair and holds shaking hands over his eyes. Snow begins to fall.

  “Not so proud any more,” Roseanna says. “Eh?”

  Snowflakes hiss in the flames. Angela reaches for Mac’s shoulder, stops, then slowly draws her hand away. Roseanna spits at his feet.

  Mac peers up at the closed-in sky, and at the owl on its post.

  “Killers!” Roseanna says.