The Taste of Ashes

by Sheila Peters

  “Let me think about it.”

  That evening, before she’d even hung up her jacket, a girl taking a dental assistant program at the local college dropped by to see the room. She looked around Isabel’s cluttered house with such barely concealed disdain that Isabel was suddenly tired. She was tired of being alone and tired of having strangers in her house. She had been hoping the girl would be right and she wouldn’t have to say no to this Lance character, would make him a cup of tea and say the room was taken.

  She hadn’t decided what to do when he knocked at her front door. About forty, she figured as he stood on the top step, leaning on a cane. Fading red hair cut short and standing straight up. A gaunt face, clean-shaven skin pale, eyes tired. Too old to be living rough. He set a small pack down inside the door and unzipped his jacket. He was no bush bum. His clothes were clean, shirt tucked neatly into jeans, hiking boots scuffed but serviceable. Good quality too, better than anything he’d find at her store.

  “I’ll be honest,” she said, plugging in the kettle. “I’m hesitant about having a man live here. Tell me why I shouldn’t be.”

  He looked around her kitchen. The blue and yellow linoleum was worn almost white. The windowsills were piled with envelopes, seed catalogues, and salt-stained flowerpots. Dishes were stacked beside the sink, its old porcelain cracked. His voice was quiet.

  “I have a friend in Terrace — she’s helping me with this. And my son, he lives there with his mother. Most weekends I’ll be there.” He limped to the table, sat carefully down, and shook his head at her offer of tea. “I don’t take up much room and I’m used to taking care of myself.”

  Isabel wasn’t convinced. She imagined him hobbling in and out of the house. Uncomfortable silences. He leaned toward her and she could see, as his body shifted, the pain in his light grey eyes.

  “I’m not begging for a place. I’m sure I can find something else. I’d rather not be here, thank you very much. But I find myself in a tight spot. I’ll take the room if it’s with the understanding that I can leave or be asked to leave on a week’s notice. I don’t want to be living in a place with silent tension. You’ll hardly notice me but I won’t be skulking around.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “At the forestry office just down the road. I’m a plant biologist, a botanist.”

  Isabel felt a clutch of anxiety about her garden.

  “I’m usually out in the field until the snow flies, but now they’ve got me sitting at a computer writing other people’s reports.” He shifted, uncomfortable in the hard chair. A glimmer of sweat appeared on his forehead. “I’m going to be needing daily physio to get in shape for next year’s field season. It would be handy, being close to things.”

  He sat there with his hands resting on her kitchen table, his feet tidy under his chair, balancing against the pain. He occupied about as much space as Isabel did, but was stocky where she was thin. He held his body very still. It gave off no sparks in spite of the way his eyes held hers before looking away.

  “Well, I guess we can give it a try. When do you want to move in?”

  He gestured toward his pack. “Now? I have to be at work in the morning and it would save me a lot of hassle.”

  “What? You just walk upstairs with that pack and there you are?”

  He grinned. “Well, I do have a couple of boxes in the truck. Small ones.”

  “You parked out front?”

  He nodded.

  “If you’ll give me your keys, I’ll drive the truck around the back and bring in the boxes for you.”

  He pushed himself out of the chair, shaking his head.

  She held up her hand. “You don’t have to worry about me fussing over you. It’s not my style. But I don’t see what’s to be gained by you toiling out those crumbling front steps with your cane to wrestle in some boxes I can likely manage just fine seeing as I spend half my working life shifting boxes.”

  He handed her the keys.

  “See how you manage the stairs; the sheets are in the hall closet. Your room is on the left.”

  He pulled out his wallet. The phone rang. She waved him away. “We can figure that out later. Go see if you like the room.”

  She picked up the phone.

  “Hi, Mom.” It was Trevor.

  The relief she always felt to know he was alive. “Where are you?”

  “Prince George. We were thinking of driving right through. We’d get in about two. Do you have room?”

  She thought of Lance’s quietness. He might as well get used to life on Railway Avenue.

  “It’ll be the couch.”

  “Ouch.”

  “I’ve got a new roomer.”

  “The couch it is.”

  “I’ll make it up for you. Just keep quiet when you come in.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Love you, buddy.”

  “Me too.”

  She hung up. Only then did she realize he’d said, “we.”

  The boxes weren’t heavy — mostly clothes and maybe a couple of books. A rattle of pills. She knocked on Lance’s door. He’d found the sheets and made up the bed. A couple of shirts were folded neatly in an open drawer. She set the boxes on the desk and nodded to the posters Amy had left behind. Trees and clusters of people. Something in Spanish.

  “I can get rid of those.”

  He shrugged. “They’re okay.”

  “My son, Trevor, he’ll be arriving in the night.”

  Lance’s face, worried. “You’ll be wanting the room.”

  “No, no. It’s just for the night. He’s got his own place up the Kispiox Valley. He’s a driller and has driven through from somewhere in Mexico. He’s crazy for driving. Anyway, not to worry. Just so you know what’s happening if you hear them coming in. There’s only the one bathroom.”

  He nodded.

  She handed him the keys. “Your truck’s out back. I locked it.”

  He thanked her and they stood there for a minute, silent. He seemed able to wait without expectations. Isabel felt herself relax. “Good night,” she said.

  She heard Trevor later — the quiet door and the squeak of the couch springs. She knew by the murmurs the other one was a woman. She cracked open her window to let in the outside sounds: the buzz of the halogen lights over at the train yard, the exhaust fan at the plywood factory. A car passed.

  †

  When she went downstairs the next morning, she was surprised to see a pot of coffee on and the dishes washed. She hadn’t heard a thing. She looked out back; Lance’s truck was gone. That was easy. She sat in her chair by the window that looked out onto the garden, warming her hands around the coffee cup, her feet cold in the draft. A grey garden, except for some purple oregano flowers and a splash of green where the little creeper, whose name no one seemed to know, covered one rock wall. The freshly turned vegetable bed’s black soil glittered with frost. She was glad for the cold; it would do the peony no harm and would keep the garlic from a fall sprouting. A couple of years ago, a warm November, late rains, and a hard frost had killed most of her bulbs and half of her perennials.

  She didn’t keep records like Alejandro. She kept it all in her head, all the different years laid one over the other. She could remember when the beds were small, when the yard had been mostly lawn. There wasn’t a bit of grass out there now.

  A big raven landed in the mountain ash dangling its heavy crop of berries on either side of the fence. He hopped onto one of the outermost branches, bobbing and swaying as it dipped under his weight. There were berries all around him, but he inched out, his eyes fixed on a clump right at the tip of the branch. Frank, she thought, and laughed to see the bird take a berry in his beak and roll it back and forth before gulping it down. She’d be hearing from him soon. Asking about Lance, warning her about his bad habits.

  It wasn’t until she’d finished her coffee and was rounding up her purse and jacket, thinking she’d probably need a scarf and gloves because there was a wind bending the alders in th
e ditch, that Trevor stumbled out of the living room. A T-shirt and boxers. A new tattoo on his right arm, some kind of bird with a long tail. He hugged her, a smell like smoke, a bit of diesel, and something she didn’t recognize. His face scratchy against her cheek. She was always surprised at how much her body missed her kids, even the sandwich hugs the boys would crush her in when they came home stinking and half drunk from a hunting or fishing trip.

  “You still working at the store?” He’d been gone months now and Isabel had been thinking about quitting when he’d left.

  She nodded.

  He pulled out a chair and pushed her into it. “I’ll drive you.”

  He refilled her cup and poured himself one, smiling sleepily across the table. She was always mad at him when he was away because she was frightened he would be hurt. The postcards a month out of date. But as soon as he was in the room with her, she was happy. Seeing his open face was like seeing her own best self reflected back. He embraced anyone who claimed relation to him, and there were dozens of folks who did; he welcomed them all into his house and didn’t wonder or blame. He held no grudges. His morning hair, thick and bristly, reminded her of his father whose astonished joy had made him a generous lover. He’d held no grudges either. Unfortunately she’d been married at the time, Jason crying in his crib upstairs.

  Trevor finished the coffee and stood, turning for the stairs. “Janna said to say hi.”

  The name clattered between them, like glass shattering on the floor. She waited, staring out the front window across to the railway tracks, while he climbed the stairs. Dead thistles in the ditch, their seed heads frosted silver. The sun was just beginning to hit the mountain. She wondered what it would feel like to be up there right now, shivering in the early light. There were people who’d pitch a tent up in the rocks like that and wake up in a sleeping bag, nothing but a thin skin of nylon between them and the sky. People like Jasmine and Frank. Probably Lance. Was that kind of life over for him? Would a cold morning freeze all the metal inside his body?

  She was no camper and could no more imagine life in a tent than she could imagine Janna in her little room alone down in that huge city. She’d like a picture. She wondered if Trevor had any.

  He came back downstairs, a wet splotch on the front of his T-shirt. He was a clean man with hardly any whiskers. It was the Gitxsan blood. He pulled on his jeans.

  “How’s she liking it?”

  “She said the first couple of weeks were rough and she’s not that fond of residence. They’re all either hippies or geeks. But she’s got her own room, she said. A little microwave, a fridge, her own bathroom.”

  Isabel nodded, unable to ask further.

  “I took her out for coffee.” He poured himself another cup. “Didn’t have time for supper, she said.” He fished a bright pouch out of his pocket and tossed it on the table.

  “I know you worry about her and me and Jason. These are supposed to help.”

  Isabel pulled open the drawstring and spilled out a handful of tiny figures onto the table. Each one was dressed in bright clothes made by wrapping thread around their bodies. Black hair puffed out from their little heads, their faces sketched in with blotches of black ink.

  “You tell them your worries and put them under your pillow — then they worry while you sleep.”

  “Seems unkind to dump all that on these blameless little creatures.” She stroked one woman, her feet hidden under a long pink wrap.

  “Believe me, Mom, they’re better off here than down there.”

  “Then we all thank you, sweetheart.” She was so happy to have him here, sitting at her kitchen table. She nodded toward the living room. “Who’s the girl?”

  “Soryada.”

  “Pardon.”

  “Soryada Verapaz.” He enunciated the syllables. “She was cooking at the camp. Wanted to see snow, she said.”

  Another one of his girlfriends. Isabel would just get acquainted with one and he’d be on his own again.

  “I should go, honey.”

  He ducked out back and started his pickup. A frightened face peered around the door of the living room. An Indian face. She could be one of Trevor’s half-sisters.

  “Soryada?” Isabel struggled with the name. Held out her hand. “I’m Isabel. Trevor’s mother.”

  The girl nodded and pronounced “Hello” very carefully. She ran a hand through her hair. A long black swath that needed a wash and a brush. She wore one of Trevor’s T-shirts pulled down over her panties. Trevor opened the door and spoke to her in Spanish. It sounded like a bark. She ducked back into the living room.

  “Hey,” said Isabel, “what was that about?”

  “She shouldn’t be coming out in her panties, like that. I told her to get dressed.”

  Poor kid must be scared half to death, she wanted to say, but she just pulled on her coat and walked out to the rumbling diesel. The bitter fall wind funnelled down the long straight stretch of Railway Avenue.

  He dropped her off outside the back door of the store and waited to make sure she got the door open okay. She reminded herself of his kindness. She knew he would stop at her bank before he went home, put down a payment on her mortgage, a mortgage that was almost done. She was not going to start worrying about another woman’s daughter, at least not yet. Once he got settled, he’d bring her back for a visit.

  She shoved the door open and waved him away. As she stood in the dim glow of the night lights, feeling for the switch, the smell of cardboard and shoe glue settled in an ache behind her eyes. The fluorescent tubes flickered and hummed, lighting up the floor-to-ceiling boxes, plastic bags glinting where the cardboard had split. The path through the storeroom changed from week to week and she’d had more than one fitful night, dreaming herself trapped in a maze of boxes, the stacks tumbling all around her, cutting off the way out. Maybe the worry dolls would take away those dreams.

  By the time she hung up her coat and turned up the furnace, the phone was ringing in the lunch room. She could barely get to it, the room was so stuffed with the last-minute cartons of Halloween specials that were supposed to have been put out over the weekend. There must have been some no shows, or maybe the new girl had quit. She was glad once again that she’d refused the answering service Jason wanted to buy for her. The manager couldn’t track her down on her days off.

  She picked up the phone. It was the new manager, ranting about the unprofessional attitude of the sales associates. Maybe it was time for a change, Isabel thought as the woman talked about the new strategies she was going to implement. The colour-coded sales charts. The productive rivalry Isabel needed to work harder to instill in the staff. Isabel had seen a dozen managers come and go and none of them could sell clothes and keep the staff happy like she could. She didn’t know if she felt like waiting around long enough for this one to figure that out and leave her in peace.

  After she scoured the burnt coffee out of the pot and put on a fresh one, Isabel went out front. She liked the store’s mystery, the way the mannequins blurred in the dimness at the back of the store, the way the darkness turned to colour and light up near the big front windows. She paused, alert to secret possibilities, and listened for any sound beyond the furnace’s hum. She heard a car door slam shut. Before the back door opened and voices spilled into the silence, she flicked on the front lights and watched all the shadows slip away. And so, she thought, let it begin. Let it begin again.

  5

  Álvaro choked on mouthfuls of damp soil, stinking of rotten flesh. He clawed the dirt away from his face and his eyes. Tangled bones dug into his back as he struggled to dig his way out of the hole. He fell back again and again as they collapsed, clattering under his feet, falling away from his scrabbling hands. The slippery smoothness of femurs. The sandpaper joints. The splintered ribs gouging his back. Shoving himself finally into an unsteady crouch, he opened his eyes to light washing through white gauze curtains. A Madonna embroidered in dusty wool hung on the wall at the foot of what he slowly recogn
ized to be his own bed. Untangling his legs from the sweat-soaked sheets, he heard Walter coughing in the kitchen. He placed his feet on the cool linoleum.

  These were old acquaintances, these exhumation dreams. Bones pale against the grey dirt. Scraps of cloth and beads tangled in the vertebrae of a neck. Rubber boots rattling with the small bones of a foot. He had pressed the arch of his own foot to a shovel to help in their uncovering. He had prayed with the taste of dirt in his mouth, the taste they had died with. Dirt on their tongues, stones between their broken teeth. He had stood with the families as they received the bones from the forensic anthropologists and arranged them as best they could in the coffins. He had donned all the power of his regalia to bless the wooden boxes lined up in the long trenches, then, once again, set his foot to the shovel. He would awake from the dreams thinking he was receiving the gift of understanding.

  He stroked the worn linoleum with the soles of his feet. They were ugly, his feet. Ragged nails on the end of the long toes, lumpy veins crisscrossing the tops. The left one sagged in the middle where it had been broken. Scars at the ankles where they’d tied him. He pulled on his socks and shoved his feet into the old moccasins Walter had given him.

  Since they let him go, a heap on the side of the highway, he had tried not to look back. He had shoved every lie Vinicio told him deep inside and struggled to repair the ruptures in his body and build his muscles so they were strong enough to keep the lies buried. He had worked until exhaustion felled him into unconsciousness. He had looked away and away and away until Clara’s whispered confession slit him open again. Sent stumbling north, he sought oblivion in the safety of distance. He lost track of the days he’d spent in Walter’s garden and in the kitchen preparing the simple meals the others preferred. He read dozens of Walter’s mysteries where the murders were quick and always solved.

  He and George told Walter about their time in Winnipeg and the church where Álvaro had introduced the Spanish mass when hundreds of Central American refugees came to the city in the early eighties. He was even able to tell stories about his return to Guatemala with some of those same refugees a decade later. About the work after the peace accord and the exhumations. Guatemalan massacres dating back generations offered up a field school for forensic anthropology. Beatings, bullets, and machetes. Knowledge useful in other places: Rwanda, Bosnia, Chile.