Starlight

by Richard Wagamese

  “You okay? Ya did well there.”

  “Didn’t feel so well,” Emmy said. “It took a while to get used to the slope.”

  “Goin’ down’s a little trickier but you’ll get a feel for it by the time we’re back,” Starlight said.

  “I liked it,” Winnie chimed. “My horse just chugged right up that hill.”

  He smiled at her. “You look like a natural up there.”

  She smiled back at him and he reached out and rubbed the back of her shoulder. She shied off and he pulled his hand back. Roth caught his eye and squinted. The four of them stepped closer to the edge and looked out across the cuts of scarp and ridge that pushed upward into crest and peaks helmeted with snow. In that hard and fulgent light, the land appeared to divide itself into planes and angles that called attention to its individual parts so that the effect of taking it all in with one sweeping gaze was dazzling. Emmy swooned and Starlight caught her elbow. She righted herself quickly and swiped at the place where he had touched her. Winnie dropped down and sat on a rock and put her chin on her knuckles and stared at the land’s array. A breeze wrinkled the silence.

  “It’s westward here,” Starlight said. “I come up to watch sunsets or moonrise sometimes. Makes for a nice walk.”

  “You walk up that ridge? Thought it took a horse to do it,” Emmy said.

  “Plumb loco this guy,” Roth said. “Some days he’ll walk up here and be gone for days with nothing but a knife, a hunk of cord, and a fishing line with a hook. I’d never walk up that thing. Not near crazy enough for that.”

  “You get used to it,” Starlight said.

  “I don’t see how,” Emmy said.

  “You might,” was all he said.

  They all took some water and remounted, and he led them along a twisting path running roughly parallel to the edge of the cliff. The intermittent bursts of view were jaw-dropping. There seemed no separation between land and the oceanic sweep of blue and cloud. The trail dipped, revealing sudden mercury pots of lakes and the sleek turquoise sheen of creeks and rivers rimmed by an undulant carpet of trees. When the trail snaked back closer to the edge of the plummet they were hung suspended over a valley with beaver ponds humped up behind the snarl of trees and rocks and mud that formed their dams. The grass there seemed lush and full and rich. They walked the horses down and when they broke from the trees it was to step out into that long valley. The press of ridge on both sides made them feel coccooned and there was little noise but the whisper of wind through that long, funnelled gap. The air held the fecund tang of bog and sap and gum. He led them along the bottom of the ridge until it broke inward to form a sheltered horseshoe facing outward toward the creek and a beaver pond beyond it. Away to the south and west they could see the regal ermine white of peaks chiselling at a sky so blue it pained the eyes.

  “It’s like a storybook,” Winnie said.

  “We’re here all weekend,” Starlight said.

  He flung a leg over the pommel and slid to the ground. Roth took his time and dismounted slowly and carefully. The two of them helped Emmy and Winnie down. While the woman and the girl stood together, transfixed, taking in the spectacle, Roth and Starlight began unpacking the gear from the horse and set to making camp. Roth unfolded canvas and rope while Starlight walked into the trees with a small axe and returned with an armful of stout poles. They sharpened one end of the poles, saving the cuttings and shavings in a pile. Winnie watched them for a moment and then ran off to the edge of the creek, Emmy following her slowly. Starlight and Roth cut strips of bark from the poles and used them to tie pairs of the poles together to form triangles. When they’d chosen the campsite they drove the pointed ends into the soft ground and laid another pole horizontally between the forks at the top ends. Then Roth stood in the middle and held the framework steady while Starlight attached ropes and pulled each tight and staked them into the ground. When they were satisfied that the frame was solid they arranged the canvas over the middle pole and staked out each side to form a tent. They were digging out a fire pit when Emmy and Winnie returned.

  “Can we help?” Emmy asked.

  “Sure,” Starlight said. “Bring some rocks over from the edge of the creek and line this fire pit with them. Nothing too big. Size of bread loaves is good.”

  They walked off to begin toting rocks while Roth and Starlight set a metal tripod over the pit and placed a wooden box holding pots and utensils and a large iron kettle near the fire. Finally, Starlight and Roth disappeared into the trees with axes and the sounds of chopping and hacking echoed off the walls of the ridge. They emerged with armloads of wood they piled close to the fire. While Roth continued gathering wood, Starlight split the woodpile into burnable chunks. The rest of the camp was set up quickly after that.

  “I don’t see any food,” Emmy said. “What am I supposed to cook?”

  “Food all around us,” Starlight said.

  “Where?”

  “Don’t mind him,” Roth said. “He gets all manly and gruff out here. Wait long enough and he’ll show ya what he means.”

  “Ain’t gruff. Out here words don’t have the same weight is all.”

  “Says you,” Roth said lightly. “Me, I figger this is where the Injun comes out of ya.”

  Starlight shook his head. “Maybe so, skinny.”

  “Skinny?” Roth stood straight and flexed both arms. “You think a body like this happens by accident?”

  Winnie and Emmy laughed. Roth winked at them. They laughed louder.

  “Well, it just so happens I got me a menu,” Starlight said. “Tonight it’s trout with mushroom and wild leek salad.”

  “Where are you gonna get that?” Winnie asked.

  “Let’s take a walk.”

  “Out there?” she asked.

  “Out there’s the best grocery store anywhere. Come see,” he said.

  He began to walk toward the trees, looping a knife sheath around one thigh. Winnie regarded him with wide eyes and then ran after him.

  Emmy and Roth watched them go.

  “She’ll be okay, right?” Emmy asked.

  “I’ll tell ya somethin’ I know about Frank,” Roth said. “If ever there was a man who could keep anybody okay anywhere out on the land, it’s him.”

  Roth set about making a fire while Emmy took the kettle and filled it at the creek and lugged it back. He helped her hang it on the tripod above the flames that were slowly licking at the kindling he’d set in the middle of the pit. He brought a log from the trees and set it on one side of the fire and then returned with another for the opposite side. They sat across from each other and watched as it grew slowly into an orange blaze.

  “Frank’s a good man,” he said. “Best I ever knew an’ I known a lot in my time.”

  Just then Winnie ran out of the bush clutching a bundle to her chest. “Ma, look what we found!” She laid the bundle of greens beside the fire and Emmy inspected them. There were wild leeks and mushrooms and greens she didn’t recognize. When Starlight joined them he had a kerchief filled with berries.

  “Ta da!” Roth said. “Now for the main course.”

  The sun was beginning to set. Starlight walked slowly toward the creek. As he got closer he hunkered down and approached it in a slow, stealthy creep. The others watched him and when he waded thigh-deep into the creek they walked toward him slowly, reverently almost, affected by the deep calm that resonated from him. They sat on the rocks beside the stream. He stood bent forward with his hands thrust elbow-deep into the pooling current and waited. When he stood up with a trout in his hands Emmy gasped and Winnie clapped in glee and moved forward on the rocks to get a better look. Starlight tossed the fish onto the bank and turned and repeated the process three more times. Then he waded to the shore with the last fish in his hands, took his knife and gutted them all, before gently releasing the innards into the stream. He clumped an inch of wet clay from the bank around each fish and set them down in the fire.

  “Why are you doing that?” Emmy as
ked.

  “Clay bakes,” he said. “It’s like an oven around the fish. We let the clay cool then crack it open. Best way to cook fish.”

  “You never heard of a fishing rod or a pan?”

  “Heard of them. They’re handy enough. More fun this way.” He looked at her and offered a small grin. “Old-time skills. They keep you real.”

  “It’s a modern world though.”

  “Doesn’t always have to be.”

  While the fish baked he gathered thick grass from a boggy patch where a small streamlet trickled off the ridge. He returned to the fire and sat and wove the fronds into a loose mat. Roth had filled a large pot with water and set it to the side of the fire. Starlight placed the mat across the top of the flames and set the greens, mushrooms, and leeks that Roth had cut and sliced onto it. Then he placed the lid over the mat and waited. The sun dropped lower. Shadow began to reclaim the land. Emmy and Winnie sat closer together across from him. They smiled up at Roth as he placed a wool blanket over them. Starlight stoked the fire and sat back on the log and began to twist a smoke for him and Roth. When he finished, the skinny man sat beside him and they lit their cigarettes with the glowing end of the stick Starlight was using to poke the fire. They smoked silently. Emmy and Winnie hunched forward together, watching the flames.

  “It’s nice,” Emmy said. “Can’t recall the last time I had a fire on the land.”

  “Wait’ll you get that grub into ya,” Roth said.

  “I’m hungry,” Winnie said dreamily.

  “Soon,” Starlight said. “You want to check to see if them fish are done?”

  “Can I?” Winnie asked. “But how will I know?”

  “Poke ’em with this.” Starlight held up his stick. “If the clay is hard they’re done. Then you just push them up against the rocks and one of us’ll grab ’em out.”

  “Then what?”

  “When they’re cool enough to handle we’ll split ’em open on the rocks and eat ’em along with them greens that’ll be all steamed and ready too by then.”

  “That’s way better than a stove,” Winnie said. “More fun.”

  “Sure is. Eugene and I’ll get the plates and stuff.”

  “Plates?” Emmy asked. “And forks? A little modern, don’t you think?”

  “Well, a gentleman wouldn’t ask a lady to eat with her fingers.”

  “Or off a rock. You are bringin’ me along on this whole gentleman thing, right?” Roth asked.

  They got the plates and utensils and then Starlight beckoned Winnie over and handed her the stick. She took it grimly. He walked with her to the fire and when she reached to poke the clay he hooked a finger into the belt loop at the back of her jeans.

  “I think they’re done,” Winnie said.

  “Well, haul ’em over to the side.”

  The girl leaned into the fire again and Starlight maintained his grip on her belt loop. She struggled but got the fish to the rocks.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Now I’m gonna grab my gloves and reach in and haul ’em out.”

  “Can’t I do that?”

  “You wanna?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fire’s gonna be hot on your arms. You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  Roth tossed Starlight a pair of work gloves and he held them open while Winnie slipped her hands in. They were huge and she held them up to her face and giggled. Starlight hooked a finger back through her belt loop and she leaned down and reached for the fish. It was awkward with the huge gloves but she grabbed the first fish with both hands and pulled it free of the fire and dropped it on the grass. She beamed at her mother. When they had all four fish cooling on the grass she ran over and sat beside her mother and stared at the smoking clay.

  “Okay,” Starlight said. “They should be ready. Come over here with them gloves.”

  The girl ran over to him.

  “Now just lift one of them fish. Grab it around the middle and give it a good crack on a rock. Not too hard though. Just a good sharp whack.”

  Winnie clenched her teeth and picked up the first fish as he instructed and rapped it on a rock. “It split!” she said.

  “Good,” Starlight said. “Now do the same thing with the others.”

  The girl split the clay on all four fish and together she and Starlight peeled them open. As clay fell away there was only steaming flesh. They put each fish on a plate and handed them to Roth, who laid a helping of greens beside the fish. When they had all been served a plate they sat by the fire and ate.

  “This is wonderful,” Emmy said. “So good.”

  When they were finished Roth gathered the plates while Starlight gave each of them a handful of berries washed in the stream. They sat silently and ate the berries and stared at the fire and upward at the sky. A wolf howled far off. There was the splash of a fish in the creek. Something small scurried through the brush. The flames licked away at the darkness and in that flush and lambent glow they felt no need of words. The men smoked. The woman and the girl rocked back and forth and the night became a living thing around them. They could hear creatures and night birds and the sudden swoosh and flap of bats hunting insects and when they looked beyond the fire there was the quicksilver seam of the creek radiating moonlight and the shoulders of the trees leaned forward closer toward them. The brawny form of an owl skimmed across at the boundary of the light and the flap of its heavy wings seemed to flay back the skin of the night, and the girl watched it vanish into the sepulchral black and all she could find to say was, “Oh.”

  * * *

  —

  Winnie woke in the first faint twitter of morning. The sunlight eked through the skin of the tent and she stood and shivered and climbed into her clothes. They’d slept on a pair of aluminum camp cots. Her mother was gone. The blankets she’d wrapped herself in were in a tumble on the cot and her boots were missing from beside the door. The girl found her own hikers and stepped into them and walked to the door with the laces loose and straggling. She opened the flap and the light and the space hit her hard and she felt vertigo at the huge, open air of it. Her mother sat beside Roth at the fire, looking out intently at the stretch of grass that led to the bush a hundred yards away. She followed her gaze and saw Starlight standing in the open with his head leaned back and his arms held out to his sides, palms up and fingers splayed. He appeared to be sleeping. She eased out of the tent and walked over to her mother and crouched beside the log she sat on.

  “What is he doing?” she asked in a whisper.

  “Just watch.”

  He didn’t move. He stood there in perfect stillness and the only motion she could see was the slow swell and release of his chest as he breathed. There wasn’t a sound except the birds in the trees. Her thighs ached and she slid to her knees. She rested a hand on her mother’s arm. The man maintained his posture and the longer she watched the more she became aware of a change in the air, a shift, like a drop in pressure, and she looked beyond him to the trees at the base of the ridge. There was nothing. Then there was a shift there too, a wrinkle, a waver as though the light folded in upon itself. There was a shadow that moved. She saw it in the hard dapple the trees threw around like a slow bleed before form took place and when the deer stepped out fully into the light she caught her breath and squeezed her mother’s arm. It was a buck. The rack of him was full and wide and when he lifted his head to sniff at the air the tilt of it was like a basket that caught the light on its tines so that for an instant the morning was impaled there and she had never seen anything so beautiful. The deer eased away from the tree and the man stood in the flat of the field, his hands unmoving in the stillness. The deer stepped silently through the bracken and deadfall and disappeared for a moment in the sweep and range of colour but appeared again, closer, more curious. She began to see the lines of him more clearly, the muscle in sheets and clumps, the roll and angle of shoulder, chest, and haunch, the jut of bone, and she breathed slowly and watched him fill out space. When he
got to the line of trees the big buck halted. He stood there and rubbed his horn against a trunk and then eased out into the open. The man did not move. The deer poked his nose upward and sniffed and for a moment she thought he would bolt but he levelled his head and came forward deeper into the indigo flush of morning. He was brown as wet sand. She could see the black of his hoofs in the grass, the nub of nose and lines of it against the flush of white at his chest and in a haired ridge down his spine. The glimmer of wet at his nose and eyes. He moved cautiously through the damp grass and the girl could see his nose working, the ears all pyramidal and taut, moving in soft swivels, and the bunches of muscles in his back legs twitching, ready to bound. But he came forward in an even, measured walk. All the man did was breathe. They were ten feet apart. The deer took to moving forward two steps at a time and halting, waiting, alert. Finally, the buck stepped right to the man and sniffed at the hem of his shirt and along the length of his arm then down his torso before raising his head and looking flush at his face. They stood like that for long moments and the girl held her breath in her throat and when the man raised a hand slowly and put it on the neck of the deer it rushed out of her in a sough and she heard her mother do the same. He held his hand on the deer. The buck stood still, only the flare of his nostrils moving. Then Starlight took his hand away and spread his arms wider and the deer backed up and when he was ten feet away again he turned and walked back majestically into the trees, regal, proud, and disappeared into the shadow.

  Starlight turned then and began to walk back to the fire, nodding and keeping his eyes at his feet. He looked up as he neared and there was no surprise or shame to him and Emmy found herself standing as he approached.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “Old-time skills,” he said.

  CALGARY ENDED AS IT BEGAN: void of direction, derelict of hope. They worked as itinerant men worked, linking day job after day job, investing more in what night might bring them than the industry of the day, their eyes keen to the quarry. In those nights they toured the dives, booze cans, dance bars, and squalid joints where the amber radiance of liquor allowed the traipse of a fiddle or the rollick of a jukebox to frame them in a degree of light that blinked out quick as consciousness in the twisted tide of beer and rum and whisky. They found likeminded men there. They found women. They entered a community of foundlings, and in the haze of cigarettes and weed and garbled talk, a sort of haven where all beyond the doors was laid aside and forgotten and replaced by a lurching sort of harmony that embraced the candour of desires and yearnings and hungers driven by the very darkness they sought shelter from. In these loose cosmologies they orbited hope together, only to spin off in sad and separate trajectories when the gravity of drink waned and their mass dissolved and the universe became as it was, cold, vacuous, lonely, and forbidding. They drove then. Aimed the truck through ramshackle neighbourhoods where even dogs lay down against the dark and peered at lighted windows in vague trust that she would be illuminated there. She never was.