Deep River Night

by Patrick Lane

  “What?”

  “You heard.”

  “Then where? Where is she?”

  “She left,” said Jim. “She’s gone.”

  McAllister stood there with his hands gripping the sides of the door frame. It looked to Joel like the man was trying to force them apart, or worse, pull them closed.

  “What?”

  “There’s just me now,” said Jim.

  “I don’t understand,” Art said. He picked up his kit, a torn frond of cedar caught in the strap. “I think maybe you should let me in so I can check on her.” There was no response and Art asked again, “Will you let me?”

  “No,” said Jim. “There’s no need you coming in, ’cause she isn’t here.” He pulled his body back into the half shadows of the joy-shack so all that showed clear were his hands on the wooden frame. It was as if he were holding himself from falling into the dark behind him, his arms a pale white, the skin left long out of the sun, his face back in the muted dark.

  “She said to tell you thanks for what you done,” said Jim, the voice hollow from the shack it came from.

  Art shook his head. “But how’d she go anywhere? She couldn’t walk. Not the way she was. And besides, where was she to go? Was there a place you took her?”

  Jim thrust himself forward, his arms pulling him half out the door. He craned his head into the last of the night and sniffed at the air like a dog, his nostrils flared.

  For a moment Joel thought Jim might scent him and he made himself small behind the bush. As he listened he wondered why Art wasn’t telling Jim what he had to do. Why was he just asking?

  “C’mon, Jim. Let me come in.”

  McAllister smiled over his horned teeth and took a deep breath as if making himself relax. “You look a little worse for wear, Art. Why don’t you head on home. Have another drink, smoke some of that chink stuff the cook’s got. Maybe you should catch some sleep. You look like you’ve been up all night. And let me know how much I owe you for Irene. I’ve never been in debt to no man. You hear?”

  “She’s hurt bad, Jim.”

  “Look at you. I know you’ve been down in Wang Po’s room under the cookhouse. Your eyes are like two pissholes in a snowbank. Go on home.”

  When Art just looked at him, the sawyer dropped his head to his chest, took his hands off the frame, stepped back, and pushed the joy-shack door shut in Art’s face, a chain on the inside rattling as it was snubbed on what Joel knew, hearing it, was most likely a spike driven into a stud in the wall. Art stood where he was for a long time and then turned away and headed along the trailer and down the rocky drive McAllister had cut out of the forest.

  As Joel followed he ran his hand over the hood of Jim’s truck. When he caught up to Art he told him the truck was still a little warm. “It was him driving it,” Joel said. “And he had someone with him. I’ll bet it was Ernie. I just bet.”

  The narrow track McAllister had cut out of the bush was rough, cedars and firs pushed over every which way and stones and branches piled up in gravel drifts along the side. Joel tripped over a stub of rock as he caught up to Art. “I saw that black pickup on the road,” he said. “I was down by the store when it drove by. It was him.”

  Art gave no sign he heard.

  At the bottom of McAllister’s gravel rift the first-aid man stumbled over the ditch by the sawmill road and kept on until he turned down onto the trail that led to his cabin by the river.

  Joel followed him to the ditch and waited there until Art faded away. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his chopped hair. The Express would be coming through and he needed to pick up Art’s package. There wasn’t much time. After that he needed to fall into his bunk and never wake up until the dance.

  When he got to the station he could hear the Express calling out of the swamp, the echoes of its horn bouncing off the walls of the canyon. He stood in the weak light under the canopy of the station and waited until the train pulled in. The few people that were there milled about in the shadows as they collected whatever they’d sent down to Vancouver for, Joel waiting quietly until most had retreated up the road or down to the mill. When the last of them had stepped away from the Express car Joel went over and asked for the package from Li Wei for Art Kenning. The man in the car opened a clasped Express box, took out the small package, and tossed it to Joel. “Every month, eh,” he said. “Like clockwork.”

  “It’s for the first-aid man. It’s medicines mostly,” said Joel.

  “Yup,” the man said. “Art used to always get it for himself but lately it’s been you. How come?”

  “He gets pretty tired,” said Joel. “I’m just helping him is all.”

  “Good for you. And you’re right. The last few times I saw him he looked pretty beat-up.”

  “He tries,” said Joel. “It’s just he’s kind of worn out.”

  “Yeah, so you said.”

  The horn sounded and the man grinned. “Next stop Avola, then Blue River,” he cried as he pulled the Express car door shut with a loud clang. The engineer leaned out his window and waved his arm as the train jerked forward, the twenty-odd cars banging against the strain. The engine sounded its horn and Joel began walking beside it along the grade as it pulled away. It was only a little ways down to Art’s cabin. The first-aid man would already be asleep or passed out and Joel would leave the package on his table. It would be the first thing Art would see when he woke up.

  The cabin was quiet as Joel placed the package beside the empty whisky bottle, the cat watching him warily. Art was lying on his bunk, his legs pulled up against his chest. He was still in his clothes. Whether he was asleep or not, Joel didn’t know. “Art,” he whispered but there was no response beyond his body twitching. Joel lighted the stove, the fire going enough to keep Art warm for a few hours.

  The last he saw was the cat resting on the windowsill. He waved at it and the cat flicked her black tail in disdain. He took the trail up past the store and the Hall. The only people he saw were a few stragglers from the station turning up to the high road, farmers mostly. A couple of them waved, but Joel kept on trudging, the bunkhouses in sight.

  The morning sun was still an hour from crossing the eastern range. Its light would careen over the crest of the mountain behind him. There was new smoke coming from the chimneys of a couple of shacks along the road. Coffee pots were perking on the stove, mugs waiting. In one or another cabin a woman was feeding a baby while she pushed kindling sticks into the firebox. Crackle, snap, cedar flaring, the heat up in the cookstove. A pot of mush bubbled on the back of a stove, two-day-old bread slices lay on hot iron, wisps of smoke rising. A man stared hungover from a chair or bed at the wall where a wolf spider waited for the prey that lived in the cracks and crannies. Kids ran or crawled across the floor. Other women stared from bedroom doorways, cups of coffee in their hands, hair uncombed and silent in the way women were when all they saw was less than what they dreamed.

  Joel knew who was in most every place, knew what went on. He’d looked through the windows. He’d seen them all and sworn he’d never be what they were. He’d never hurt Myrna, not in a million years. Or Alice either. Especially her. She had that look he’d seen in Indians before, a kind of shadow behind her eyes as if something was crying inside.

  As he passed by a cabin he glanced at a boy standing naked on the bottom porch step pissing absently into the dust and grit at his feet. The child’s fist was stuffed into his mouth, drool on his fingers dripping. He waved absently with his free hand as Joel passed. Joel paid no heed, just went on by, crossing the road and walking down the side of the bunkhouse to the back. Everything was quiet. He sat on the stub of fir on the porch and loosened the laces that bound his ankles, pulled his boots off, setting them down quietly. There was no one awake yet in the bunkhouse and he wanted it to stay that way.

  He gazed at the green wall across the river, closed his eyes, and saw in his head the Monashee range far off to the south, the long blue line of the Arrow Lakes. For a momen
t he was back home.

  Where was he now?

  Those old mountains of his were far away and gone. It was strange thinking about what he’d left behind, how he didn’t miss it, yet he yearned somewhere for some kind of home. But could anyone really make a home in a place like this? And then he thought of the people who did, the hill people, farmers like the Turfoots and such who had made their lives in the valley. Others too. And Joel liked living up the river. And there was Myrna. She’d be here forever and there was Alice too, but thinking of her made him feel a little lost. Somehow he knew she wouldn’t be here any longer than she had to be and he wondered if she’d always be a little homeless, a little lost too, no matter where she was.

  The valley where he sat lay in shadow. The light wouldn’t reach down into the river until ten o’clock. He got weary to his feet, his boots hanging from his hands as he carefully elbowed the door open. He let it come to rest without a sound.

  He thought of Reiner up at the dump some night soon with Jim McAllister, the two of them pit-lamping the grizzly he’d met on the path. The bear was special. Seeing Joel it had lifted its black snout and drawn him inside its great body, the huge intake of air rushing into its lungs and turning him into the blood that swam in the bear’s heart. He could feel himself and then felt the bear in him and at that moment wanted to go up the line of bunks and slice open Reiner’s throat. Joel could feel him under his hand, Ernie’s body thrashing there, blood like Irene McAllister’s pooling through his fingers.

  Pushing his boots against the wall by his bunk, Joel stripped off his knife and scabbard and pushed it under his pillow. Belt unloosed, he shrugged out of his shirt, hung his hat on its nail in the wall above his head, and fell onto the sheet, lapping the grey blanket over him. He was dead asleep when his head hit the pillow.

  YOU’RE MY BABY GIRL, AREN’T YOU?

  Hearing Sister Mary say those words Alice woke in the dark, thrashing, her blanket tangled and her yanking at it tightened around her legs. She didn’t know where she was and then she did. The night was everywhere. Jesus wasn’t on the wall staring down at her. Sister Mary had put him under the bed and she was holding Alice.

  Alice pressed her hands against her eyes as she tried to close her mind, shut tight the door that let the words in, Sister Mary saying, Lie still, Alice. You lie still.

  Sister Mary always held her finger against her lips when she came to get Alice from the dorm. Sister woke her up, but she didn’t really because Alice was always awake. She knew the nights Sister Mary came. The Sister would take her from her bed, hold her hand, and lead her down the long hall to Sister Mary’s room where Jesus slept. He slept there because Sister Mary put him there. When Alice came she’d take the cross with Jesus on it and lay him down under the bed so he could rest. She said Jesus lived everywhere all the time, but when he got very tired he liked to sleep there.

  You have to be quiet. You don’t want to wake up Jesus.

  Alice would climb into the bed and lie facing the wall. When Sister Mary got into bed she would turn her over and hold her tight. Alice would lie very still because she knew if she didn’t then Sister Mary would get mad and she didn’t want the Sister to get mad. If Alice did then Sister Mary would hurt her. She would tell Alice she was a bad baby. She would say, You’re a bad baby.

  Alice would try to lie very, very still when that happened but it didn’t matter how still she was. In the end Sister Mary would tell her she wasn’t a baby anymore, she was a bad girl, and Sister would say, You’re a bad girl, in the quietest of quiet voices, in a whisper so small only Alice could hear it, and she could hear it because Sister Mary’s mouth was pressed against her ear, whispering.

  You know what Jesus does to bad girls, don’t you, Alice? Don’t you?

  And Alice held herself in the tangle of the blanket in the room that Piet and Imma built to hold her. She wrapped her arms around herself and she didn’t move. Not for a long time. When she squinted her eyes open at last she looked up at the window high on the wall with its thin pig-wire bars. Through it she could see the faint stars. It was the false dawn and she knew what that was because Cliff had told her about the earliest dawn, the time before the light became the light. She remembered what he said. He said, “It’s the light from the sun before the sun gets broken.”

  She could ask Cliff anything. He knew everything there was to know.

  He was beautiful.

  Alice stared up at the window but the boy, Joel, wasn’t there. Most nights he came to see her. Not every one, but when he did she could always hear him outside on the gravel behind the wall. Each step he took clicked on the rocks like faraway beetles talking and when he climbed onto the round of wood and clambered up to the window she could hear that too, the little bumps and scrapes he made against the boards. He tried to be quiet, but sometimes after he had been watching for a while she would hear him breathing, his breaths heavy and thick. Alice knew Joel didn’t want to wake her up, but she was awake almost every night unless it was the morning. It didn’t matter anyway. Alice always pretended she was asleep when she heard Joel come. She knew he wasn’t there to talk. He hardly said anything, not even in the café when he asked for his bottle of Coke. He’d just look at her.

  He liked to watch Alice and it didn’t matter. It made her feel safe to know he was there. It was like he was protecting her. When Joel was at the window she could go a little deeper into sleep and the bad dreams didn’t come. Sister Mary and Jesus stayed away when Joel was there. The other dreams too, the beatings, the nights without anything to eat, the wooden box she was put into out by the sheds, the sun beating down. And Alice suddenly remembered Christmas and how Sister Mary never let her eat her cornflakes. It was special, cornflakes on Christmas morning. Once a year. A treat, the Sisters said. For weeks the kids used to talk about the cornflakes they were going to get, but Alice never got to eat them. Only once when her friend Margaret sneaked out a little handful from her bowl. Alice loved how the golden flakes crunched in her mouth, how she tried not to swallow them, the crackle of the tiny bits like magic melting in her mouth. Margaret was her friend, but Margaret was sick a lot. She coughed at night and if she coughed too much then the Sister would come in and take her away to another room where she had to stay by herself. When the coughing was bad she spit up blood.

  Somehow it seemed Alice always got into trouble at the school. She tried to be good, but Sister Mary and Sister Grace always said she was bad and punished her. The worst was when they strapped her legs. She had bruises all up and down her legs from Brother Whelan whipping her. She hated what he did, but it was worse for other kids.

  She had been at the school three years when Margaret died. She was a year younger than Alice. One night Brother Whelan came and took Margaret away like he always did and that night when she was brought back to the dorm Margaret was sick in her bottom and where she peed and by the time it was breakfast she couldn’t come to eat and when they were in the schoolroom learning how to say English words Sister Grace came and said Margaret was dead. They took her to the pine trees that night. That’s where the little kids got buried. Brother Whelan wrapped her in a piece of torn-off canvas and carried her to the pine trees. He stood there with Margaret at his feet and watched while Brother Andrew dug the hole. He had to dig two holes because one of the Sisters said he found bones in the first hole he dug.

  But not Alice. She wasn’t going to die no matter what they did to her.

  She lay there staring out the pig-wire window and then she cast the Sisters and Brothers from her mind. “Cast them away,” she said in a whisper, and then because she couldn’t hear Mister Harper coming she said it again, louder. “I cast you all away,” she cried. “I cast you away.”

  It was enough for now, no matter her dreams when Sister came to get her in the night.

  Alice got out of bed and went over to the bucket in the corner, took the lid off, and sat down to pee. The rim was cold on her bum and she hated that, but she had to sit right on the bucket be
cause once she slipped balancing there and the bucket got knocked over and Imma got mad. She wouldn’t let Alice clean it up all day, telling her that if she wanted a smelly room then she could have one. Alice didn’t want Imma to get mad again.

  Finished, she cleaned herself and dressed and waited for Mister Harper to come and unlock the door. It would be the first time he’d be the one to let her out to work. The day she arrived from Kamloops on the train, Imma had brought Mister Harper to the room. He’d looked at her in the way Piet sometimes did, only Mister Harper’s look was worse. It was like she wasn’t even alive. Like a piece of meat, that’s how she felt. Something you could hang in a cooler.

  It was her being locked up that made them look at her that way. That’s what Cliff told her. “You’re their prisoner, just like at the school in Kamloops,” he had told her. “They think they can do what they want with you.”

  Alice always made sure to get up and get dressed before anyone came, Imma or Piet, but especially today now it was Mister Harper. She didn’t want to be alone with him watching her put her clothes on.

  Sometimes she had to wait a long time before she was let out of the room, but that was better than being caught in bed. The one time that happened it was Imma who unlocked the door. Imma didn’t say anything to her. She just stood and watched as Alice peed and got dressed. Imma was just like the Sisters at the residential school. They watched too. That night when she went to bed Joel didn’t come and there was no one to protect her from the night.

  But Sister Mary came.

  It was like she knew Alice was alone. Sister came in the dark and it was bad.

  Alice knew Mister Harper would be coming soon.

  She combed her hair slowly and tied it back with a piece of red twine she had taken from a potato-sack tie in the storeroom. The colour was pretty against her black hair. There wasn’t a mirror in her room and none in the store. Sometimes she could see her reflection in a window if the light was just right, but it was never clear enough. Cliff had told her she was pretty. No one had ever said she was pretty and Alice wondered if she was.