“Your mom tried to go out into it, but I dragged her back to bed and held her there. I held you both.”
Hannah turned to face her father. “That was the last night I can remember feeling like we were a family. Everything fell apart after that.”
Jesse kept his eyes on the storm building above Little Mountain but said, “I am sorry I have to sell the place.”
“Are you?” she asked.
Before he could answer, his attention was drawn past Hannah. She turned to see several trucks pull to a halt in front of the bridge, kicking up a cloud of dust. Construction workers wearing fluorescent vests and hard hats got out of each of the trucks and marched onto the bridge. Alex was the only protestor there on this weekday morning. He rose from his lawn chair to block the men’s passage.
“Are they taking down the blockade?” Jesse asked Hannah. “Trying to enforce that court order on their own?”
“I don’t know.”
Jesse looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get to the auction. Let’s get the rest of these cows loaded.”
But Hannah was watching Alex and the men who had swarmed around him. “Can you just give me a minute?” Hannah didn’t wait for Jesse to answer. She jumped the wooden fence of the holding pen, cut through the pasture and climbed through the barbed-wire fence at the road. As she reached the bridge, a couple of the men from the construction crew threw protest signs over the railings. Another was shouting, jabbing his finger at Alex’s chest, which Alex did his best to ignore as he talked into his cell. Hannah realized the angry man was the father of one of her classmates from high school. His last name was Holman. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Alex told her, still holding his cell to his ear. He grabbed her hand, squeezed and let go, urging her to leave.
“You got no right to be here either,” Holman told Alex, and ripped down another of the protest signs and threw it over the railing. The sign, which read O Canada, Your Home on Native Land, turned circles in the eddies below. “Go home,” he told Alex. “We’re going back to work.”
“I don’t think so,” Alex said, tapping the screen on his phone to end his call.
“Who’s going to stop us?” Holman asked him. “You?” He looked Alex up and down. Hannah suddenly saw Alex as Holman did, still so much the boy.
“I phoned a few friends to join the party,” Alex said. He pointed across the river, at the activity his calls had sparked on the reserve. A number of people were leaving their homes to join them on the bridge.
Holman held up his own cell. “Good for you,” he said. “I’ll phone the cops. There’s a court order already in place that says you got no right to be here.” As Holman made his call, one of the other men from the construction crew began a chant that all the workers picked up: “Go home, go home, go home…”
Holman ended his call and yanked down the remaining protest signs. When Alex attempted to stop him, he pushed Alex back hard.
“Hey!” said Hannah. She stepped between the men. “Leave him alone.”
Holman was tall enough to look right over her. “Fucking lazy Indian. Maybe you’ve got nothing better to do than sit around collecting welfare. But we’ve got to work—we’ve got mouths to feed.”
“Alex has a degree,” Hannah protested. Alex hadn’t yet found work in the region, but since his return, he had offered several storytelling and acting workshops in area schools and libraries.
“Hannah, don’t,” said Alex.
She looked at each of the men in turn. “Any one of you got a degree?”
“Yeah, so what’s his degree in?”
Hannah hesitated. “Theatre.”
The men burst into laughter. “Hear that, boys? He’s an actor.” Holman turned back to Alex. “I work on contract. I don’t get the work done, I don’t get paid. You know how much I’ve lost because of you? How much my family has lost?”
Hannah put her hand on Holman’s arm to get him to look down at her. He smelled of diesel. “Do you understand just how much will be lost if you finish that road and that development?” she asked him. “Do you know what that development could do to the river?”
Holman’s glance slid to Hannah’s hand on his arm, but then Abby barked from the pasture behind them and Holman looked past her. “What the fuck?” he said.
Hannah turned to see her brother walking towards them. He was naked and barefoot, stepping gingerly on the gravel as if each footfall was painful. In the holding pen behind him, Jesse fought to get the last of the cows into the trailer, oblivious to his son, bare-assed and shivering on the road.
“Jesus,” said Hannah. She took off her jean jacket and jogged towards her brother. As she met him, he looked through her rather than at her, to Little Mountain beyond. “What are you doing?” she asked. She attempted to tie her jean jacket around Brandon’s waist, but he pushed her away and kept plodding. She got in his way. “Brandon, stop this. You can’t walk around naked. Come on, let’s go home.”
Brandon appraised her dully and then watched as an eagle circled low over their heads and drifted down to land on the dead branches of the pine standing at the footings of the bridge. The bird was a juvenile with rough, unfinished plumage. Brandon tilted his head, as if listening to it, though the bird made no sound, only looked down at him with one yellow eye.
The men from the construction crew laughed nervously at the odd sight of this naked boy. They would soon guess about Brandon’s illness. Everyone would know. Hannah saw Gina’s dark figure watching from her living-room window. Shit. Gina would take over as she always did. She would push for Brandon’s hospitalization just as she had for Stew’s.
Hannah took her brother by the shoulders. “Brandon! Let’s go back to the house.” But he shrugged her off and started walking. “Bran,” Hannah pleaded, taking his arm again in an attempt to lead him home, but her brother yanked himself from her grip and walked unsteadily towards the bridge. He was stronger than she was now. She couldn’t stop him.
The men from the construction crew parted for Brandon, and, one by one, the Shuswap protestors did the same. Brandon ignored them all—the laughing men in their fluorescent work vests, Alex’s whispering cousins, aunts and uncles—as he made his way to the rise at the midpoint of the bridge.
Alex grabbed Hannah’s hand to stop her from following her brother, then wrapped his arms around her from behind, holding her back. “Just watch,” he whispered into her ear. “See what he does.”
Brandon stopped at the high point of the bridge, staring up at the pictograph on Little Mountain like some open-mouthed, mentally disabled kid. Hannah strained to get out of Alex’s grip, to reach her brother, but Alex wouldn’t let her go. “Wait,” he said.
Brandon climbed the wooden railing and stood there swaying a little on the top rail, finding his balance. “He’s going to jump off!” Hannah cried. “He’s trying to kill himself.”
Alex breathed into her neck. “I don’t think so.”
“Someone help him!” Hannah called out to the Shuswap protestors, but none of them moved. She knew these men and women. They would help anyone in the community, on either side of the river, for any reason, but now they seemed unwilling to interfere. No, Hannah thought, scanning their faces. They were afraid.
“I told them Grandpa Dennis’s story,” Alex explained. “They know what the mystery is capable of, what’s coming. Or, if they don’t believe me, they’re curious to see what he’ll do.”
Hannah turned within Alex’s arms in an attempt to get free, but he wouldn’t let her go. She saw Gina striding down the road towards them, in navy skirt and heels. Hannah craned to see her father closing the door on the stock trailer. “Jesse!” Hannah yelled. “Dad!”
From the road, Gina picked up her cry. “Jesse!” And finally he stepped out from behind the trailer to see Brandon standing naked on the top railing of the bridge. He leapt over the holding pen and sprinted towards them with Abby barking at his heels.
“Alex, let
me go!”
“Wait for it.”
The juvenile eagle left its perch on the dead pine and circled above them, casting a moving shadow like the zigzag of lightning against the cliff face. Then Brandon raised his arms to the sky and the blue-green clouds immediately coalesced directly overhead, boiling in a circle at an unnatural speed. Almost at once the storm broke on them: lightning flashed over Little Mountain, and thunder boomed in the clouds above.
“Jesus,” said Hannah, flinching.
“He’s practising,” said Alex. “He’s building his strength, testing Brandon to see if he’s strong enough.”
“Strong enough for what?”
“You’ll see.”
Hannah felt the electricity of the storm suddenly gather around them. Her skin under Alex’s hands tingled. The hairs on her arms and on Brandon’s head stood on end. She heard a buzzing and turned to see the metal rods on the protestors’ tent glowing blue with St. Elmo’s fire.
“Shit,” said Alex. He let Hannah go, and she immediately scrambled to her brother. Behind her, Alex shouted, “Hannah, no!” And then, “Everyone, get off the bridge! Now! Lightning is going to hit. Here.” The construction crew scattered back to the relative safety of their trucks. The protestors fled the bridge in the opposite direction, to the reserve beyond.
Lightning cracked the sky directly overhead and a bolt of plasma hit the structure. Hannah felt the thunder vibrate through her bones, the bridge shake beneath her feet. Instinctively, both she and Alex crouched down on the balls of their feet, holding their heads. Brandon remained standing on the railing with his arms high, inviting the lightning to strike again, and it did, hitting the deck only yards away. The wood burst into flame that spread to the backhoe, setting the wooden deck beneath the vehicle on fire.
“Hannah,” Jesse shouted from the road. “Get the hell out of there!” Abby barked and barked beside him but wouldn’t step onto the bridge.
“We’ve got to go,” Alex told her, pulling on her arm.
“I’m not leaving Bran.” The backhoe was already engulfed by fire and would blow at any moment. “Please,” Hannah begged, “help me get Bran down.”
Alex nodded and stood, calling out to Brandon, “You’ve got to stop this now. You’re not ready. This isn’t the time or the place. Not on this bridge.” Brandon kept his arms extended to the sky. Lightning flashed, hitting a dead pine on the reserve side, and the tree burst into flames. “You hear me? It’s not time yet.”
Brandon turned on the railing to look down at them. Hannah cried out, certain her brother was about to fall backwards into the water, but he found his footing. Alex held out his hand to the boy. “You’ll know when the time is right,” he said.
At last Brandon leaned down to take Alex’s hand, and Hannah and Alex hurried him off the bridge. Behind them the backhoe and bridge deck burned on, throwing up flames as tall as a man. Billows of thick black smoke filled the air with the smell of burning creosote.
Brandon’s expression was stunned and his whole body shook. Once off the bridge, Brandon collapsed into his sister, and Hannah knelt with him on the gravel road, cradling him in her arms as Jesse threw his coat over his son.
Rain began to fall, a scattering at first, then a deluge that rattled against the deck of the bridge and pinged against the workers’ crew cabs, and sizzled on the burning backhoe. Alex took off his own jacket and held it over both Hannah and Brandon as if this would protect them from the storm’s wrath.
“You see now, don’t you?” Alex said to Hannah. “Brandon is filled with the mystery. He brought down this storm.”
Hannah saw Jesse and Gina exchange a look. In the distance, she heard the wail of a police car heading towards them.
“I’ll tell you what I see,” Jesse told Alex, wiping rain from his face. “I see my son is so fucked up he accepts anything you tell him. I can’t figure out if you really believe this shit or not. What’s your angle? Do you get some kind of cheap thrill from messing with his mind?”
Alex stood slowly and stepped back. Gina directed Jesse’s attention to the men from the construction crew watching from their trucks. “Don’t do this,” she told him. “Not now.”
Just then, the diesel tank in the backhoe blew, throwing a cloud of smoke and flame high into the grey sky. The midsection of the burning bridge collapsed into the river and the blackened husk of the backhoe shifted abruptly, coming to rest on the metal bridge supports beneath. Steam hissed as chunks of burning wood hit the water.
An RCMP cruiser pulled to the side of the road behind the construction trucks, and Gina’s husband, Grant, jumped out with a grey blanket and ran through the rain towards them, the yellow band on his RCMP cap bobbing. Grant was so tall, Hannah thought, head and shoulders over the small crowd he pushed through to get to them. She noted how his eyes lingered on Jesse and Gina, on how close they kneeled together. “Is he hurt?” he asked, looking down at Brandon.
“I don’t think so,” said Gina. She had told her husband about Brandon’s illness, Hannah thought. But of course she would.
“You need help getting him to the hospital?” Grant asked Jesse.
Jesse wouldn’t look at him. “No, I’ll take him in.”
“I’ve got to clear out these vehicles,” Grant said. “The fire trucks will be here soon.”
He turned first to the men of the construction crew, then to the Shuswap protestors on the far side of the burning bridge. “Do you know what caused the fire?” he asked Gina. “Was anyone here involved?”
“You mean, did one of us start that fire?” Alex said. “Christ, I can’t believe you’re suggesting that. We would never torch our only way home.”
“Grant knows that,” said Gina.
“I just need to know what happened,” Grant said. “How did the fire start?”
“Lightning struck the bridge, set the deck on fire,” Jesse said.
Grant turned to his wife for confirmation. “Lightning,” Gina said. “We were lucky no one was killed.”
“An act of God,” Alex told Gina. “Maybe that’s exactly what it was.” But Gina wouldn’t look at him or respond.
“Okay, better get Bran out of here,” Grant said. “I’ve got to get these men to move their trucks.”
Together with Jesse, Hannah wrapped the blanket around Brandon and helped him up.
“I’ll get him dressed and come into town with you,” Hannah said.
“Maybe it’s best if you stay home.”
“No, I’m going with you.”
“Hannah, I really think you need to sit this one out.”
“Dad.”
“I don’t want you there,” Jesse said. “I need to talk to the doctor without—” He paused. “Without your interference.” He pointed at Alex. “And you stay away from Brandon. Stay clear of my house.”
Jesse glanced at Hannah before ushering Brandon back to the farm. She stayed where she was and watched him lead her brother away. They reached the Robertson gate just as two fire trucks screamed past. A few minutes later Jesse led Bran, now dressed, out of the house. He got him into the truck and drove up the hill, past the community hall and out of sight.
Hannah stood alongside Alex as the firefighters prepped the trucks and then hosed the bridge deck. Despite the rain and their efforts, the fire burned on for some time, ash and debris lifting on the wind and floating back down on them like feathers.
On the reserve side a crowd had gathered to mourn the burning bridge. Hannah saw one of her father’s old girlfriends among them, a woman named Fern. She was in her late twenties now and had put on weight. Hannah understood from what Alex had told her that Fern had a son in kindergarten who’d been fathered by one of the white millworkers. A few years earlier, she could just as easily have had Jesse’s child, a sister or brother to Hannah. Fern glanced at Hannah and away, as if Hannah were just another white girl across the river.
As the firefighters continued to battle the smouldering blaze, Alex took Hannah by the hand and led her
back home, the dog trailing them. She was shivering. They were both wet through.
In the kitchen, Alex put on the kettle, then stripped off his wet shirt and hung it and his jacket to dry on a kitchen chair over the furnace vent. Bare-chested, he turned to Hannah and relieved her of her soaked jean jacket and started to pull up her equally wet T-shirt. Embarrassed, she resisted. He took her face in both his hands. “Let me help you,” he said, repeating what Libby’s lover had said to her. Hannah complied, holding up her hands as he pulled the shirt from her. He unfastened her bra before slipping it off her shoulders. She covered herself as he hung her wet garments on a chair. Then he took her in his arms and rubbed her back with his warm hands. Here was a moment she had long imagined: Alex’s arms around her, the feel of his bare chest against hers. And yet all she could think of was her brother standing on that railing.
“What did I see out there, Alex? Did Bran really bring down that storm?”
“You tell me,” he said.
She had seen Brandon raise his arms and witnessed the lightning flash as if in response to his request. She had seen her brother—or this spirit within him—embrace that storm as if it were a part of his nature, his power.
She turned her head to look out at the burning bridge and there, outside the window, Brandon watched them. Hannah startled, withdrawing from Alex, covering herself. “Bran?” But as soon as she said his name, her brother vanished.
“Bran’s at the hospital, with your dad.”
“He was at the window.” Hannah grabbed her wet T-shirt and held it against her breasts as she peered outside, but there was no sign of her brother.
Alex joined her at the window. “You saw his ghost?”
“I don’t know.” The vision of her brother had been as fleeting as the dark scurry of a mouse half-glimpsed. Had she seen something or not? As with a mouse, chances were she had. Hannah shivered.
The Spawning Grounds Page 13
