Starlight

by Richard Wagamese

  “Stay here,” she said. “I’m just going to have a chat with this woman.”

  She got out of the truck and walked over to the rail fence and leaned on it with one foot on the lowest rail. The woman was doing groundwork with a young horse, leading it with her hand and getting the horse to follow at her shoulder. When she put it through a tight turn she saw Emmy leaned against the fence.

  “Can I help you?” she hollered and the horse shimmied but held its place.

  “I hope so.”

  The woman left the horse to stand and walked over to the fence. She was tall and broad with florets of brown hair stuck out of the broad-brimmed hat she wore. Her dungarees were faded and thin and her shirt was flannel and blue checkered.

  “Viv Anders,” she said and stuck out a hand.

  “Emma Strong. Emmy, they call me.”

  “Well, Emmy, what can I do for you?”

  “I’m travelling with my daughter and we’ve had a touch of bad luck.”

  “Is that so? What kind of trouble did you find?”

  “Someone stole my bag at a truckstop. Took all our money.”

  “Well, you know, this world is getting crazier and less trustful by the day. That kind of thing doesn’t surprise me anymore.”

  Emmy smiled at the words. “I wondered if you might have a bit of work I could do. I’d be happy to do anything for a meal or even gas to get us on our way.”

  “Where you headed, Emmy?”

  “Vanderhoof,” she said, recalling the name off the map. “Thereabouts anyway. I can muck stalls. I used to do farm work when I was a kid. I’m still a good hand with an axe too if you need splittin’ done.”

  Viv laughed. “Well, I don’t know how Cliff would take to a woman splitting a cord but I sure don’t see the need for you to do that. How old is your girl?”

  “Eight, almost nine. Winnie. Winifred. Her name is Winifred.”

  “Well, why don’t you drive up to the house. I’m going to put Cash back in the stall and I’ll meet you there. I’m pretty sure I can find something you can do that needs doing.”

  “Thank you, Viv.”

  “Well the truth is, Emmy, there’s not a lot of folks anymore that are willing to do work for a favour. Reminds me of when I was a girl and barter was the way of the world. I like to hear that kind of talk. Miss it, really.”

  She walked back to the horse and Emmy returned to the truck. “We’re gonna have to do a bit of work for that woman, but she’ll feed us and give us some fuel.”

  “All right,” Winnie said quietly.

  She drove up the driveway and parked and waited for the woman to show them what to do.

  * * *

  —

  They forked fresh straw into the eight stalls Viv had for her horses. Then they moved a sack of oats from the mow to the lower level of the barn and then whitewashed rails on three of the partitions where the cattle were kept and finished off by filling water troughs for the stock and the chickens. It was good work and Emmy found herself pleased with it. When they had finished Viv showed them to the gas tank and they filled the truck while the woman went to the house and returned with a box filled with food stuff. Emmy took it and set it on the bench seat of the truck where they could both get at the box while she drove. Winnie doodled circles in the dirt with one foot.

  “This really helps, Viv. I thank you.”

  “You earned it.”

  “We’ll be on our way then.”

  “A little word of advice, honey, if you don’t mind?”

  “No. Please. Go ahead.”

  “Whatever it is you’re running from is never really gonna get left behind.”

  “What makes you think I’m runnin’ from somethin’?”

  “You don’t have a suitcase. No luggage beyond a sack of clothing in the box of that truck. You move like you’re afraid you might go sideways and that girl is skitterish as a barn cat.”

  “I suppose we do look it.”

  “That you do. Here’s what money I can afford to give you. But it’s really for that girl. You see she’s safe and warm and fed.”

  “I will. And thank you, Viv.”

  “Thank me by getting your feet set down somewhere soon. Don’t go dragging that child around the country. She needs school and she needs friends. She needs a home. You see to that and it’ll be thanks enough.”

  She handed Emmy a roll of bills that she tucked in the pocket of the shift, then Viv opened her arms wide and swept her into a hug. Emmy stood ungracefully, embarrassed and off-put by the sudden intimacy. When she let her go Emmy raised one hand and brushed awkwardly at a lank of hair. Viv walked around the front of the truck to the passenger side and looked at Winnie, who sat quietly in the seat with the door open.

  “You take care, girl. Mind your mother.”

  “I will,” Winnie said.

  Emmy climbed behind the wheel and set the roll of bills beside her hip. The women exchanged a long look. She started the truck while Viv closed the passenger door and they rolled down the driveway to the road again. She glanced back the way they had come and wondered if the miles alone would keep them safe. She bit down on her lower lip and quaked briefly, sharply. Then she handed the roll of bills to Winnie.

  “Count this,” she said and pulled out and aimed the truck northwest, deeper away from Cadotte and the bleak life she’d left behind.

  THE HEAT WOKE HIM. Then the smoke. Then a panic driven by rage that allowed Cadotte the strength to crawl away from the wall and reach a hand up to the foot of the bed and haul himself to his feet. He heard Anderson moan in the roiling smoke. He followed the sound to the bedroom door, where Anderson lay immobile on the floor, one hand reached behind him, gripping at the seeping wound in his leg.

  “Kid,” Anderson said. “Never figured on the kid.”

  Cadotte helped the big man to his feet and Anderson slung one arm across Cadotte’s shoulders and together they lurched out of the bedroom. The front room was an inferno. But the flames burned off the heavier smoke and they could see enough to make their way toward the main door that listed on its rubber hinges, allowing draughts of air that only fed the flames higher. Great coughs racked both men. Their eyes burned but they made the door and together they stumbled out onto the porch and their momentum carried them forward until they pitched off the steps and landed heavily in the dirt and twitch grass. The truck was gone. Cadotte rolled onto his belly and breathed and eyed the yard. Beside him Anderson groaned and clutched at Cadotte’s knee, so he grabbed Anderson’s wrist and set his heels in the dirt and hauled the man farther away from the house that crackled and spit and hissed and roared with sheets of flame that spewed higher into the night. From far off they heard sirens.

  “Bitch,” Anderson muttered.

  “Gotta get the roll,” Cadotte said.

  “Ain’t she got it?”

  “Saw her drop it.”

  “She’s likely burnt already then.”

  “Ain’t knowin’ laying out here.”

  Cadotte stood shakily and craned his neck a few times to clear his head and wiped a large palm across his face. He lumbered to the porch and through the door, and Anderson could hear him hacking. The sirens were closer. Anderson wanted a drink. Cadotte’s cursing rose through the yowl of flame. Headlights swept across Anderson and he raised a hand. Fire truck. Ambulance. The sounds of men running, shouting, frantic and alive with urgency. He felt hands on him just as he felt a weightless sliding into darkness. He fought hard against it, clutching his fingers into the dirt, and let his face slump into it, the sandy grit of it rousing him some so that he heard rather than felt Cadotte crash down beside him.

  “Found it.”

  “Crazy fucker.”

  “Gonna need it,” Cadotte said.

  It was the last sound Anderson heard before the sheet of darkness fell over him.

  THEY FINISHED THE TRENCH and dug out the ground around the old septic tank in two days. They replaced the pipes starting at the crawl space under the
house and lifted the tank out with a winch on the tractor and set in the new one. It was foul work. But the weather cleared and the last day of work was fair and temperate and they were finished by mid-afternoon, and after showering and shaving and fresh clothes they climbed into the truck and headed for town. Starlight had the developed shots of the wolves in an envelope. He liked to finish his own film. There was a small room on the second floor he’d turned into a dark room, and he’d come to love seeing lives emerge in the fluid washes. He was a frugal man. He’d been raised to know the value of things yet temper it with an understanding of industry and the feeling of one’s own work in securing what was necessary and needed. It was a farmer’s sense and he bore it proudly. If he was taciturn it was because he found words mostly inaccurate and awkward, and chose economy over the fumbling speeches he endured in other men. Roth was the gregarious one. Starlight enjoyed the rants the skinny man made and allowed himself to take a side in the wild discussions Roth could spark only because he loved seeing Roth’s energy fill a room. Now, they sat in silence admiring the landscape; the elongated valley set down between a line of mountains on either side, the farms lush and green with the early summer, and the smell of hay and manure and horses through the open windows. He loved this land. Loved it in a quiet way expressed in a slight crinkling at the corner of his eyes when he looked out across it, and a feeling of calm like silence deep in his gut. He needed nothing more than the farm and the solitary time he spent on the land on horseback or on foot. He knew no word for wild. For Starlight the backcountry was like a prayer or a hymn, and a man approached it the same way: reverently, quietly, fully aware of the awe, wonder, and respect it caused to rise in him. He lived for it and craved it like a favourite meal.

  The town was small. There was a single main street with five parallel streets and six avenues slashed across those. The town fathers had chosen height restrictions back when the old man was alive and there wasn’t a single building beyond three storeys. The majority of the homes had been built near the turn of the century, with the newer, more modern homes erected along the edges of the town so that entering it was like travelling backwards in time, and Starlight always found himself slowing below the speed limit as he approached, allowing the atmosphere, at once timeless and rustic, to enter him. It pleased him to come to town. He relished the fact of knowing the people he dealt with, their histories, their families, their faces seemingly hewn from the stuff of the town itself; ruddy and fair and unmarred by things like time and progress. The few times he turned up at church on a Sunday were episodes of great community and he felt proud to be known and recognized. Living elsewhere had never occurred to him again after he’d made the U-turn at the end of his driveway after the old man passed. This was his home and these were his people. He supposed he was old-fashioned. If it were true, he could live with it. His bachelor status was something credited to him rather than gossiped about. Even the fact of his Indianness was just another element in the rich stew that comprised the word hometown. He felt no urge to discover more about that. For Starlight the farm was his heritage and culture, the plainspoken earnestness of his neighbours all the language he needed, and the feel of the land beneath his feet all the philosophy and worldview that fed his sense of purpose. A night sky brimmed with stars, the snap and crackle of a fire behind him in the darkness, and the howls of wolves on distant ridges were all the spirituality he’d ever needed. He was not displaced or dispossessed. He was home. In that, he felt keenly alive. Skin colour and difference jangled in his perception of place. He was simply a member of a community like he always had been and he occupied his small place in it with dignity, industry, and an affable neighbourliness he’d become known for. Quiet Frank. That’s what they called him. Big Frank too, sometimes, but his size was not his measure. The quality of his stillness was.

  “There you go again,” Roth said.

  “There I go again what?”

  “That place you go. You get all quiet and you’re plumb gone.”

  “Sorry, Eugene.”

  “Ain’t no call to be sorry. I’d just kinda like to know where it is you get to.”

  “Can’t say. All’s I know is I can see myself doing what I do, hear myself thinkin’ what I think, feel myself feelin’ what I feel.”

  “But you ain’t there? You’re just watchin’ yourself?”

  “Yeah. That’s about as good as I can put it.”

  “That some kinda Injun thing?”

  “Don’t think so. If it is I don’t know how I come to get it. I expect it’s the land.”

  “You’re gonna have to whattaya call it…elaborate, pal.”

  “I don’t know. You know how when you’re out there miles away from anything, how you can sit or stand in perfect silence and not have to or not even want to move?”

  “Yeah. Like last fall when we packhorsed into that lake.”

  “Like that. Yeah.”

  “That I can get. So you’re sayin’ that’s where ya go? Into that kinda quiet?”

  “Yeah. It just falls over me sometimes. It’s what I feel when I’m on the land alone. It’s how I get them pictures you like.”

  “That’s gol’ darned art that. If that’s the reward of it, Frank, I’m all for it.”

  They eased into the parking lot at the Safeway. Starlight gathered up the envelope with the pictures and the negatives and Roth straightened his shirt and jacket and they got out and stood looking around at the town. It was an amiable afternoon and there were a lot of people moving about.

  “I’m headed to Deacon’s,” Starlight said and raised the envelope. “About an hour, an hour and a half, I figure.”

  “That’s good for me. Got me a date with the barber then off to the Regal for a cold one and a game of pool. I’ll meet ya here later,” Roth said.

  They headed off in their separate directions. Starlight walked easily and gracefully for a big man, like a horse never understanding how large and powerful it really is. But he greeted everyone he met with a nod of the head or a finger to the brim of his hat and stepped aside for the elderly or those of lesser stature or folks with bundles or bags. He wasn’t a man to impose himself. Walking was a joy to him. He strode through town casually and was greeted with his name or shouts or waves that he returned in kind. When he reached Telegraph Avenue he turned left down its tree-lined length to the photography studio Elmer Deacon ran out of the main floor of his house. Deacon had been the first person he’d shown his pictures to.

  “How’d you come to get these shots, Frank?” he’d asked him then.

  “Don’t really know. I just know that I grew uncomfortable with shooting animals with a gun except for food and maybe they got my change of energy,” he’d said and the idea had felt odd and foreign to him then. It felt more natural now.

  “Well, whatever you do, it works. I’ve never seen such intimate shots.”

  Deacon had become his agent as his talent had grown. He’d schooled him on the use of the longer lens, the ins and outs of aperture and shutter speed, and how to use natural light so as not to spook the animals. He sent Starlight’s portraits out to magazines and galleries and exhibitions. Through the past four years Starlight had shot loons and eagles, bears and mountain lions, wolves and elk and moose, always capturing them in bold, moving attitudes that reflected unseen characteristics. His photographs had become popular and praised and provided him with a good source of income.

  The doorbell clanged when he entered and Deacon walked briskly out of the back. “Frank,” he said. “Did you get me wolves?”

  “I got you wolves.”

  He handed the envelope over and Deacon laid the prints out on a light table. He bent over closely and scrutinized them. “Wonderful. Magnificent,” he muttered, running his fingers along the edges of the four portraits. He stood up and put both hands on his hips and studied the photographs from a distance. “These will blow up perfectly. McNulty at Nature magazine will fall all over himself for these. I think we’re looking at a cover.
Sure do wish you wrote, Frank.”

  “Me’n words don’t exactly have a workin’ relationship on paper.”

  “I know. I was just expressing a fond desire. If you could capture in words what you’ve caught in these shots…Well, it would be fabulous.”

  “So you like ’em?”

  Deacon laughed. “Like? I flat out love them and so will McNulty. I’ll ship them out today, but there’s something I want to discuss with you.”

  “All right.”

  “I’d really like you to go to Vancouver. There’s a big gallery there that wants to mount an exhibition of your work and they’d like you to be there. So would I. It would be incredible exposure for you and your career.”

  “I’m a farmer. That’s my career.”

  “You’re also an artist. An exemplary one. No one, and I mean no one, gets these kind of shots, Frank. They’re special. Magical. Captivating. We’ve done well together, don’t you think?”

  “Sure. But that’s your doin’. I figure a good week is gettin’ the new septic in.”

  Deacon laughed again and patted the big man on the shoulder. “That is a good week. But you could have so much more if you’d let me book you for appearances.”

  “I appear,” Starlight said. “And what I got is what I need.”

  “I know. Did you ever hear the word transcend?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Well, transcend means to lift over, move beyond, rise above. Your work lets people transcend the quality of their lives. Your work literally lifts them up and over and beyond what they believe they recognize. That’s the mark of a true artist.”

  “What does all that mean?”

  “It means you’re special. Your talent is special. People want to be able to connect with it, connect with you. Hear you speak about it.”

  Starlight grimaced and scanned the walls of Deacon’s studio. Several large prints of his creatures were hung there. He could recall the connections he’d made with each of those animals.

  “When I got them wolves,” he said slowly, “there weren’t no words in my head. There weren’t no ideas about how to get ’em. I just ran with them. I don’t know how I do that. I don’t know why. It’s just what I do. I figure if I can ever explain it to someone, I might lose it on accounta it happens without words or ideas.”