The Spawning Grounds

by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

  “I don’t know. There’s no blood or swelling, but he seems confused.”

  Gina studied his eyes in the way Hannah’s mother once had after a childhood tumble. “Brandon,” she said. “How you doing? Talk to me, buddy.” Brandon only looked bewildered. Gina patted his face as she repeatedly said his name, and the confusion slowly drained. He pushed away from the water’s edge. “The water mystery,” he said. “It was coming for me.” Then he saw Stew. “Is Grandpa dead?”

  Alex looked up briefly at them and shook his head, but then Stew coughed and began breathing on his own. “Oh, thank god,” said Hannah.

  Gina helped Brandon stand and she and Hannah walked him down to Stew. Brandon behaved as if his legs were new to him.

  One of the protestors had retrieved Stew’s hat. Another had brought a grey wool blanket and Alex had draped it over Stew. His skin was pasty white and he had lost his glasses to the river. He looked around blindly as Abby licked his face. “Brandon!” he cried, pointing not at his grandson, but at the water.

  “Bran is right here,” Hannah said. She took her brother’s hand and tugged Brandon to his knees beside him. As soon as Stew saw his grandson, he closed his eyes and seemed to lose consciousness, then mumbled for a time. There was mud on his scalp and one wayward, wiry hair stood at attention at his brow. “Wunks got him!”

  “The what?” Gina asked. “He’s not making sense.”

  “It’s something from a poem,” Hannah said. A poem called ‘The Raggedy Man.’ ”

  He showed me the hole ’at the Wunks is got,

  ’At lives ’way deep in the ground…

  When Hannah was little, Stew had read that poem to her over and again until her father, Jesse, put a stop to it. Stew had told her the Wunks were real, that they lived in the rushing waters beneath the bridge and could turn into him, or Jesse, or anyone. His story had scared the crap out of her. Hannah imagined that was her grandfather’s intention. He didn’t want her swimming in the dangerous river.

  Gina wiped the mud from Stew’s scalp, looking for blood, but there wasn’t any. “He may have suffered some brain damage.”

  “He was out too long,” said Alex. “Maybe if I got to him sooner.”

  “Hey,” said Gina, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t go blaming yourself. You did good. You’re the hero here today.”

  Brandon said, “Grandpa won’t come home from the hospital, will he?” He glanced at Hannah as they both remembered when their father had revived their mother from drowning but she died in intensive care.

  “I think the time has come for long-term care,” said Gina. “You’ll have to phone your dad and let him know he’s got to come home and deal with things.”

  Jesse lived in the lower mainland and hadn’t been home in years. “I can deal with things,” Hannah said.

  Alex wrapped an arm around Hannah, the gesture so natural she found herself settling into it as easily as she had once relaxed into her father’s hug. Even though Alex’s clothes were as wet as hers, his body radiated heat and his warmth moved into her.

  “The farm is Jesse’s responsibility now,” Alex said. “You can’t sort out all this alone.” Alex was right, of course. She would have to cancel her first semester’s classes even if her father did come home to help out. If the past was any guide, she knew Jesse wouldn’t stay long. Since their mother died, he couldn’t stand to be around. If their grandpa didn’t come home, Jesse would sell off the animals, arrange the sale of the farm and disappear again. She and Brandon were on their own.

  Stew tried to sit up but failed. Then he reached to tug on Brandon’s arm, pulling his grandson closer. “I saw you on the river,” Stew whispered. “You were there, in the water with me, at the same time you were on shore with Hannah.”

  “You were drowning,” said Hannah.

  “No, I saw his ghost, his—what’s the word?”

  “Doppelgänger,” said Alex.

  “Did you drink that thing in?” Stew asked Brandon. “You know what I’m talking about. That thing you saw in the water.”

  “I guess,” Brandon told Stew. “There was a boy…” He touched his throat, his temple. “Then I felt something, inside.”

  “Shit,” said Alex.

  Hannah took Alex’s arm to get him to look at her, willing him to explain.

  He briefly scanned the small crowd around them, then lowered his voice. “If that water mystery has him, if Brandon’s soul is out walking, he could die.”

  “What do you mean ‘out walking’?”

  Alex didn’t answer. He clawed a hand through his hair and turned to the zigzag of lightning on the cliff face of Little Mountain, to the ghostly figure—both fish and man—that emerged from it. The siren of an ambulance blared as it rushed down the road towards them.

  — 4 —

  First Light

  THE WATER HAD two surfaces, one above and one below, worlds that mirrored each other, with the depths between. Swimming from one surface to the other took effort, stamina. The boy had struggled up through water and to that distant shore with great difficulty. When he finally arrived, he was exhausted and blinded by the sunlight that shifted and flared off everything around him. Objects had shape and colour but little meaning, as if he was an infant.

  The boy followed a blue wall with his hands and came to a pool of water hanging on it. He attempted to slide his hand into the water but his fingertips wouldn’t penetrate. In the hard surface of the frozen water, he saw the face of a stranger.

  He had travelled into this stranger’s mind in the way salmon fry swim the tiniest underground tributaries through rock, to appear as if by some enchantment within household wells. The day before, on the river shore, the boy had surfaced briefly, but it would be some time before he was strong enough to wrangle full control.

  “Bran,” a girl called. “Get dressed. We’ll feed the animals, then go straight in to see Grandpa. You’ll have to hurry. I’ve got to move salmon up the river this morning.” She paused. “You hear me?”

  The boy remembered hearing that name at the river. He was this boy now, Bran. He pressed a hand to the face reflected in the magic pool and saw this hand reflected there as well. Two hands meeting. He remembered, then. These people had found a way to capture a still pond and hang it on the wall. He pressed his nose to it and tried to see to the pool’s pebbled bottom.

  “Are you awake?” When the girl opened the door, he turned to her, but he could take in only pieces: a mouth, a long, slender nose, a tangle of reddish-brown curls, one hazel eye that appeared both green and golden in the early morning light. With effort, he pulled together the parts of her face and saw that she was strikingly handsome, though she carried herself with the uncertainty of a girl who didn’t yet know herself. He had heard her name called along the river shore. She was this boy’s sister, Hannah.

  “Bran, for Christ’s sake, put on some underwear.”

  He remembered few words of her language, but nodded.

  Then she took a step forward and she was in pieces again. “Are you stoned?” She sniffed the air around him. “Are you drunk?” Beside her, the bare, pale blue walls took shape, along with an unmade bed and clothes scattered across the floor. There was a bureau here he recognized from an earlier journey to this place. At that time, the house had smelled of freshly cut pine. Now that smell was overpowered by the human scent of a young man coming of age.

  Behind Hannah, a shadow wavered and lingered, a woman spirit that followed her. He knew this woman. He knew her intimately. When she was alive, in this world, she had carried him within herself for a time. He knew her name. “Elaine,” he said, pointing at her.

  Hannah laughed, confused, afraid.

  “Elaine,” he said again, but Hannah couldn’t see her mother.

  She picked up an armful of clothes from the floor and threw them at him. “Get yourself dressed.”

  He caught the underwear and T-shirt, this body acting on instinct. Hardness was everywhere here—under his fee
t, in the walls of this building—so unlike the floors and walls of a kekuli, the winter home of his past forays into this world, a house built into the ground, with walls made of earth. Within this white man’s house, even the light above him was hard, captured within an upturned bowl fixed to the ceiling. He stared up at it, captivated.

  Hannah snapped her fingers. “Brandon! What’s the matter with you this morning?”

  He rubbed his eyes to show his fatigue, hoping this would calm her. And he was tired. He sank back down on the bed, back into that dark river. He hung there for a time, neither in this world nor his own, but in the waters between. Here he would rest and gain strength in the way his brothers’ and sisters’ children grew over the winter within their stone nests before bursting up into the river water as fry come spring.

  “What’s going on?” Hannah asked.

  He turned away from the girl, from her chaotic form and gibberish, to the window. There he saw the soul of the boy Brandon banging against the glass, displaced, a refugee from his own body.

  — 5 —

  A Hummingbird’s Flight

  GINA LEFT THE door open as she entered the kitchen with a basketful of tomatoes, the last of the year. She lined them up, one by one, on the windowsill over the sink. Some were still green, but most were overripe. She would have to use them this week. So, a salad for lunch, cubes of tomatoes tossed over lettuce bathed in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, garlic and basil. Later, a tomato sauce over spaghetti for supper. She’d make fresh salsa and maybe use that as an excuse to invite a few friends over and fill the kitchen with the warmth and conversation she craved. The house had seemed so lonely lately. But what friends? She couldn’t think of anyone she really wanted to invite. Certainly none of Grant’s buddies from work, other cops. Or her own co-workers from family services, women she saw too much of as it was. She had let her other friendships slide away. And few relatives from the reserve felt comfortable here, in Grant’s home, a cop’s home.

  She paused after placing the last tomato on the sill to look over at the old Robertson place. It had been a week since Stew’s fall in the river, and Hannah and Bran were alone in that house. Bran hadn’t been catching the bus to school, but then Hannah had been missing her classes as well. Gina had seen them both in the pasture and barn, feeding the animals, cleaning the stalls. She imagined school was more than either of them could handle right now.

  She had expected Jesse to return after she phoned him, and after Hannah had called too. Jesse had said he would try to head up into the interior within a day or two. But she still didn’t see his truck in the yard. She thought of phoning him again, but she would have to wait until Grant was at work. She should take something over for the kids, a lasagne maybe.

  Gina felt Grant’s footsteps reverberate through the kitchen floorboards and she turned away from the window.

  “Looking for someone?” Grant asked. “Jesse, maybe?”

  “Just lost in thought.” She lifted a ripe tomato to her nose to breathe in its fragrance, as this smell had always calmed her. “You ready for lunch?”

  “Always.”

  He poured himself coffee and reached into the cupboard beside her for sugar, whitener. She felt petite beside her husband, though she was a tall woman herself. Today Grant was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and his feet were bare, but he still wore his authority. He was clean-cut and broad-shouldered, one of those cops who could not have gone undercover and got away with it. Early in their marriage Grant’s demeanour had made her feel safe, protected. Now she so often felt on edge in his presence.

  Gina picked up a knife and started cutting up the tomato, praying Grant wouldn’t bring up Jesse again. There was a hum, a buzzing, and they both turned to see a hummingbird fly into the house through the open door. It darted around the kitchen, then hovered in front of Gina, right at eye level, as if eliciting her attention. Such a beautiful, unexpected thing. Its body was grey and olive; its head and throat a glistening red.

  “What the hell?” Grant asked. “Hummingbirds should be long gone by now.”

  “This is an Anna’s hummingbird,” said Gina. “They’ve started overwintering on the coast in the last decade. I saw in the newspaper that one hung around all winter in Vernon last year. There was a picture of it at a feeder covered in snow. A bonus of global warming, I suppose. I’ll fill up my hummingbird feeder; I might just keep this one around.”

  The bird left her and flew to the window over the sink, banging into the pane above the tomatoes.

  Gina said, “We need to get it out of here before it injures itself.”

  The bird stopped to rest on the windowsill, the rapid beat of its heart visible in its tiny chest, and Gina dropped a mug over it, then slipped her hand quickly beneath the bird so it could not escape. It was so unbelievably tiny, smaller even than it appeared in flight, no bigger than her thumb, its wings beating madly against her hand. Gina tentatively lifted a finger from the cup, to take a last look before releasing it, and the bird shot upward, then zipped through the open door. It flew directly across the road to the Robertson house, where it buzzed against the upstairs window to Bran’s room.

  Gina stood on the kitchen stoop for a time, watching the hummingbird’s relentless attempt to get into the window, into the mountain landscape it saw reflected there, or, perhaps, it fought its mirrored image.

  “Lunch?” Grant called.

  “I’ll be right there,” she said, but stayed exactly where she was. She looked back at the Robertson house but the hummingbird was gone. She searched a countryside shining brightly in the yellow and orange leaves of a sunny Shuswap fall, hoping to spot the tiny bird again. The ferns along the road had turned brown and the rosehips a vivid, glossy red, yet chicory still bloomed indigo. Autumn was here now, but warm, warmer than she remembered from her childhood. Still, she wrapped her sweater around herself as a wind picked up, scattering leaves and signalling a change in the weather.

  — 6 —

  Homecoming

  JESSE ROBERTSON RATTLED along the highway in the baby blue ’57 Chevy pickup that had once belonged to his father, Stew, a truck that Jesse had intended to restore for as long as he owned it, which was almost a decade. He carried his equipment in the truck bed: his welder and tanks, his toolbox and grinders, torches, hoses, rods. The one bumper sticker read, Welding Ain’t for Wimps.

  He had put off this trip back home for a full week, telling his daughter he had a welding job to complete, which was not the truth. But now, as he drove through the arid country past Kamloops, he felt the emotion start to rise: home. Bunchgrass, sagebrush, ponderosa pine. At Little Shuswap Lake the landscape shrugged off its austerity and grew lush: the small green farms and acreages of Chase, the emerald hills that surrounded the town.

  The GPS unit stuck to his front windshield told him where to go, as if he didn’t know. In two hundred metres, turn right. He turned off the highway at the Squilax Bridge, then followed the slow, winding road along Shuswap Lake, over the bridge at Adams River and then at Scotch Creek, heading for the home in which his parents had conceived him, where his father had been conceived, and his grandfather too.

  The road diverted from the lake and rose over Lightning Hill. At the summit, Jesse pulled into the community hall parking lot to smoke a joint before facing his family. He stared at what was left of the forest, pines in the red attack stage of pine beetle infestation, still alive but dying. A sign read, Mountain Beetle Salvage Harvesting. The pines looked like an army of rusted tin soldiers standing at attention, interspersed with the dead, propped corpses, grey hair hanging. At their feet yearling pines no more than a foot or so high were also red, also dying.

  Below him, Lightning River snaked through the narrow strip of river plain. Above the bridge at the narrows, the valley was still dominated by small farms of one kind or another. Holsteins lounged in pastures outside dairies, Herefords munched on dry grass, and he could even spot llamas out to pasture.

  Stew’s cow-calf operation stret
ched from the bridge to the lake. He could see the farmhouse nestled in an orchard close to the shore, the barns and outbuildings scattered around it, the beef cows—Herefords—drinking from the river. The snaking wooden rail fences that bordered the Robertson homestead had been built by Eugene a hundred and fifty years earlier. He had constructed them without nails and they still stood, hugging the curves of what had once been a wagon road, and before that an Indian trail. On the opposite side of the river, the reserve houses were tucked between the shore and the benchland. The cliff face of Little Mountain towered over the community, monolithic.

  Jesse breathed in a last toke as his gaze settled inevitably on Gina’s property just across the road from his father’s. Smoke curled from the chimney, so she was home. He felt a tug in his gut at the thought of seeing her again. He had talked to her on the phone a few times in the years since he left, most recently about Stew’s health and his plans for the sale of the property, but they hadn’t spoken face-to-face since Elaine’s funeral, and even then Gina had only whispered a few guarded sympathies under her husband’s watchful eye. Jesse hadn’t been sure Grant knew about them until that moment. But conjecture had obviously spread after Elaine took her life. Grant had not offered his hand or his condolences to Jesse. He had stood behind Gina in his tailored suit and kept his eye on the crowd, standing guard as if he was on duty.

  Jesse pinched out his roach and pocketed it, to roll into another joint later. He rubbed his face as he prepared himself for the difficult afternoon ahead, then he slipped back into his truck and headed downhill.

  A big yellow “community watch” sign welcomed Jesse to Lightning River Valley. The Details of Your Vehicle Will Be Recorded, it cheerfully warned. Jesse crossed a Texas gate, a cattle guard, past another sign telling him to Watch for Livestock and then drove through a patch of swampy wetland. The foliage and bulrushes were a wash of fall colour, but even so, on this cloudy September day, the swamp was dreary and forbidding, covered in a haze of fog. On a day like this one many years before, when Jesse had noted how haunted the swamp looked, Stew, seated in the passenger seat beside him, nodded and said, “Good place to hide a body.”