The Orchard Keepers

by Robert Pepper-Smith

  I didn’t know then, that with all his experience on the river, he had never felled a tree.

  I was outside spading over some hard clay for a garden when I heard the roar of the chainsaw, a tree crashing into some branches and then, after a few minutes, a brief scream.

  He had dropped a tree onto another, angled like this, and she showed him with her hand propped on the table, the butt resting on the ground. He cut away the butt and the rest of the tree slid down and pinned him to the ground.

  The firefighters and you paramedics came, and they took him to the police station in New Slocan, laid him out on a table there. That’s where I said goodbye. His eyes still showed a look of pain and surprise. He’d tried so hard to breath that the capillaries in his face had burst, turning his cheeks a dusky red.

  I touched his hand, gave him a kiss on the forehead, then they covered him with a sheet.

  That is my life here now, she said, spreading her fingers on the table as if to rise. Twilight had come, and in the mountain’s shadow there was little light left in the room.

  I keep feeling that through failure I have something to contribute here, she said. Still, these days I have one medical complaint after the other, the old hurts are in the way.

  There is a limit but it varies from day to day. A good plate of fresh peas and a good night’s rest and I can go a little farther. This morning my ankles were so swollen I hardly recognized them.

  We made mistakes, I have failed. And perhaps my failures are my greatest contribution to life, to something beyond me.

  We had a good family, you know what I mean?

  I have one more story to tell you before you go:

  Peter Camozzi came to see me, do you remember him from the old town? That man can fix anything. He built us our first house on 2nd St. and later, when we could afford it, he helped us build our barn and a shed for hay storage here. I liked the men and women he worked with, his crew. Once he told me that he always hired the same people, though they never came in with the lowest bids on his projects. He knew he could rely on the quality of their work and on them. He knew they would be there when he needed them.

  Once he brought a load of hay for our cows on a flatbed trailer. The electrician Mary Williams had come along to help him. They were talking about a project they were working on, the laying out of street lights in a subdivision. And when the hay was in the shed, while they were still talking in that low considerate voice that I often heard among his tradespeople, and because they didn’t have a broom, they gathered the straw wisps on the trailer with their boots and pushed it clean, side by side. At that moment I heard myself say, I love these people.

  I’ll think about it, she said, tapping the cheque on the table. And you think about it, too. Don’t make the same mistake we made.

  It gets to us all in the end, she said, as he put on his coat. We all fail. Just make sure you don’t fail far from yourself.

  Chiapas, Mexico

  He takes down and folds the blue tarp that has been their home for several months. The rain has stopped, the clouds have drifted away. There is a scent of pine on the wind.

  Down at the checkpoint, a marimba orchestra is rehearsing traditional tunes. Already some of Bernabe’s people have gathered there, their belongings in carts or tied to their back. Across the border, the school bus engines are starting up.

  He sees his wife and son squatting to fold their bedding. A few tendrils of smoke rise from a cooking fire that he’s doused for the final time with a can of water. Though they’d only been here for a few months, he feels affection for this place that has taken care of them and offered shelter, and in his heart he gives thanks.

  They are waiting for the witnesses to arrive.

  Two Canadians, an Australian nurse, an Irish woman, a German filmmaker, and two women from Mumbai in India. They slept last night in the school in Lagos de Colon.

  He has spent so much of his life crossing and recrossing this border. And, as always, there was a little fear.

  No, a lot of fear.

  He has never got over the fear, but he’s beginning to feel a border is a kind of sanctuary. At the border the Capital is afraid of its own shadow. Here it must acknowledge that what it can’t see or touch easily slips by, can’t be controlled, and that is why the soldiers of the border patrol always have a nervous fear in their eyes: their task is impossible. They have been pushed up against the limits of their own understanding, and they feel there’s a vast beyond that is more powerful than they are. The vast beyond, that which they cannot exploit or measure or control, is actually quite small; a hidden package of love letters, for instance, the videotape of a marriage or a funeral, a piece of sacred bread or the traditional clothing of a young girl. These pass through the sanctuary of border like corn meal through a sieve. The Capital is always looking behind itself for what has already gone by, on a foot track or a goat path that it cannot see. Border is sanctuary because it gathers all these unobtrusive paths that recognize each other.

  He’s heard there’s talk of raising a metal fence here, financed by the Americans. If they do, this border will become even more of a sanctuary. A fence is not a border. It will be the last expression of the Capital’s fear, now that it has lost touch with the land and become memoryless.

  The witnesses will bring cameras. They will photograph not only Bernabe’s people and their joyful crossing, but the soldiers who impassively line the road on the other side. They will photograph and photograph and send dispatches, the only protection against a possible ferocity.

  The Capital has reassured them that they will be safe. However Bernabe doesn’t trust them. Somehow it is now in their interest to allow his people to go home, but he doesn’t know their reasoning. What has changed all of a sudden? Why this posturing of welcome?

  A month ago they’d received a document from the Minister of Justice stating that they could return to their land — as long as they agreed to live peacefully, as long as they did not to raise their voice against the mine in any way or to interfere with its rights. Of course they refused. Such rights could only mean, as the mine continues to devour earth, the ongoing poisoning of their water and more forced evictions.

  And now this: a statement that they were free to return, with no imposed conditions.

  Bernabe holds the letter in his hand, signed not by the Minister of Justice, but by the President himself. He can’t imagine why this is so. Perhaps the signature is a forgery. Still, news of the letter has spread across the world.

  Alana is the first of the witnesses to arrive. Her hair is tied at the nape and she is wearing a shawl of woven cotton, a jump kit and a camera slung on her shoulder as she climbs the hill to Bernabe’s dismantled camp. He hands her the letter and she reads it and smiles.

  “Do you believe this?” she asks.

  “No denial has come from the Capital.”

  She turns and indicates the road across the border. “Soldiers have been sent,” she says, “and school buses. What is being prepared for us?”

  At first he thinks, against the soldiers all we have are our hands and our hoes. But then he realizes they have more. We walk in truth and justice, he realizes, and even if we are destroyed we will have added our grain of sand. He takes the letter from her hand. The path is long and you go along it walking.

  “What’s that sound, daddy?”

  I’ve rolled down the window so that he can hear.

  We are driving into the Butucci orchards. Already a number of cars and trucks are parked on a grassy expanse outside the main gate. There’s a sign nailed to a stake that says, This way to the wedding. Beyond in the trees, a white canopy, trestle tables, streamers and balloons tied in the branches.

  “It’s a marimba,” I tell my son. He’s smiling and his eyes are shining as he leans forward to listen. He feels the joy in the music, a son de entrada.

  “That’s real bouncy music,” he says, and he’s eager to get out to find its source.

  We park at the gate, walk in
among the trees. It’s a widely spaced apple orchard and the trees are old, nowhere near the takeline.

  We’ve come early because I’ve heard that Bernabe is to be here. He’s on a tour with a marimba band, to raise awareness about Canadian mining practices in his country and in Central America.

  No one wants to hear about a mine, he told me over the phone. But everyone will come to hear marimba!

  He’s agreed to play at this wedding because I’ve asked him. It’s my gift to Maren.

  Long ago I climbed into these trees during a festa to kiss her and she pushed me then, not trusting the kiss, hating that I’d jumped to the doctor’s order that I hold down her knees while he stitched her chin. Even then, as a boy of fifteen, by that act I felt that I’d become less than I was and even now though memory and through what I write of those days and days afterwards, I’m searching in memory for a healing and tending way to the ones I love and to this land that I love.

  Chairs have been set up under the white canopy. There guests will gather for the ceremony. Not until then will I see her, see how she is dressed, see the flash of her green eyes, her smile, how her hair is tied up, see her from a distance among others who love her, maybe have an opportunity to exchange a few words of congratulations in passing.

  People are gathered around the marimba, and I recognize some from the old village: Mr. Beruski who now works in the Cowan St. Mill, Maren’s godmother Mrs. Canetti and the groom’s mother Jean Fuscaldo. Under the white canopy I see my uncle Paolo sitting alone, his shoulders lowered and his head bent as if asleep, listening.

  And then I see Maren walking away through the old trees with the groom, hand in hand. They’ve been to greet the arriving guests and now they are retiring, to dress for the wedding. She is wearing a light brown dress, her hair loose at the shoulders. He is in light cotton pants and a white shirt, and he stops her. He slips something on her wrist that looks like a band of gold and she laughs then, drawn into his arms. And then they turn and walk away through the trees.

  The music is wonderful, it puts a dance in your step. Bernabe has taken the middle position. He stands there, solemn and grave, the blur of the sticks in his hands. All three players, expressionless, look over and beyond the crowd into the distance. Their austerity is a sign of respect for the bride, the groom and for the guests that have gathered for the ceremony. Not only that — the music honours the dead of this land and the land they served, brings them close in heart and mind, and they give us the strength to go on.

  Acknowledgements

  The song on page 84 is from Danilo Dolci’s Sicilian Lives. The songs on pages 39 and 66 are excerpts from a Sicilian harvest song published in The Journal of Peasant Studies.

  Excerpts from this trilogy have been previously published in Writing Beyond History (Montreal: Cusmano Communications, 2006), as a chapbook entitled Mio Zio (Toronto: Flat Singles Press, 1999) and in Venue and in Queen’s Quarterly. The Wheel Keeper and House of Spells were previously published as separate volumes by NeWest Press, and have been newly revised for this edition.

  Thanks to Dr. Rebekah Shoop. We have travelled many of these paths together. For their enduring friendship and support, thanks also to Kegan, Adrian, Dion, Katie, Wes, Laurie, Drew, Les, Christle and Floyd; to John Taylor, Sylvie Nicolas, K. Louise Vincent and especially to Claire Kelly, Matt Bowes and Natalie Olsen at NeWest Press.

  The author expresses his deepest gratitude to Tom Wharton, editor at NeWest. It has been a joy to work with you.

  Thanks also to Vancouver Island University and to the Banff Centre’s Writing Studio for the time and place to complete early drafts of the manuscript.

  Robert Pepper-Smith was born in Revelstoke, BC. He currently lives on a farm in the Cinnabar Valley with his wife Anna and teaches philosophy at Vancouver Island University. His childhood in Revelstoke and his experience as a volunteer paramedic with the NGO Alianza in Guatemala have inspired this work.