by Angie Abdou
“Come. Join me for a glass,” Lucy says quietly, gripping Patricia’s bottle around its neck. I wonder what Nicholas will say about the wine. Alcohol always does this, finds its way back into their lives. “We’ll just have one.”
Lucy wants the wine. I can see her want in the way her eyes grab hold of the bottle, the speed with which she steps toward the corkscrew and waves Patricia to follow behind her.
“No, no, I couldn’t intrude.”
“Yes, yes. Please do.”
“Well, okay. Yes, just one. That would be lovely.” Patricia steps into the living room, scanning our cramped quarters and spotting me curled up on the old couch under a heavy blanket, too heavy for today’s close, smoky weather.
“Eli’s not feeling well,” Lucy says. She’s used to finding excuses for me. “He’s not himself today.” I nearly laugh. “He’s still recovering from his hike, maybe.” Lucy looks to the floor, sheepish, an acceptance of blame. Patricia gives me a friendly nod as she follows Lucy to the kitchen. I expect her to ruffle my hair, but she leaves a wide space between us. Maybe I do look ill, even contagious. Patricia looks different too, without her purple flowers and high-heels and sharp earrings. Today she’s in old exercise clothes, pants to the knee, a short-sleeved shirt with a faded race logo on the front. Both the pants and the shirt are a little too big for her. Today, she looks like somebody’s mother.
Lucy waves her hand around the room apologetically. “The house is so old. It’s been in Nicholas’s family for generations. We’re not sure what we’ll do with it. If we stay, I mean. Tear it down, probably. Start over.”
“It’s Elijah’s house,” I say. “My great-great-grandfather. He’s there.” I point at the plaque.
“He’s ... where?” Patricia raises her eyebrows at Lucy.
“Oh,” Lucy wears her you-have-no-idea face. “It’s just a plaque that we remember him by, an award for bravery during a mining accident. But, yes, as Eli says, this is still very much Elijah’s house. We won’t be starting over any time soon.”
“Good for you for giving it a bit of time, sweetheart, making a careful decision before you rush into anything. The house is fine. Steven talked me into a tear-down and re-build. A million dollars later! A build never costs what they say. Now we’ve got a beautiful house, I’ll give him that, but we’re mortgage poor! I understand that phrase now. Keep your money. Money equals freedom. I’d like to tattoo that on my husband’s chest so he sees it each morning when he looks into our overpriced mirrors.”
“I guess property poor is better than real poor. You can always sell the house.”
“Pfft! Not with this ‘grave mistake’ issue blowing up we can’t. Just what a home buyer wants—a million-dollar house sitting on human remains. Nope, I think we’re all here to stay, sweetie.”
I bet Patricia is one of those women who calls everyone “sweetheart” and “sweetie.” She uses her hands while she talks too—not waving them about like Lucy but setting them on people, on Lucy’s shoulder, on her forearm. Always touching. But she’s not touching me.
Lucy pours wine into two old stained coffee mugs. “We haven’t unpacked our city dishes yet. Sorry. You’re our first guest. Life has taken a solitary turn here in Coalton.”
“Quit with the apologies.” Patricia loops her fingers gently around Lucy’s wrist and gives it a friendly shake. “Today I’d drink wine out of a dog bowl. Believe me.”
Patricia talks about how Steven duped her into building their house. “It’ll be a down-size, he said, it’ll be a green build.” She shakes her head. “He works in oil and hates it—they all hate it!—and now he’ll never be able to quit. We’ll be paying for this house until we die. Until we die three times over.”
As if dying were that easy.
“More wine?”
“Yes, I don’t mind if I do. Thank you, sweetheart.” Patricia holds out her mug with one hand and rests her other hand across Lucy’s forearm. “When we discovered Coalton five years ago, it already wasn’t good anymore. The time of dirt-cheap property, a hidden adventurers’ paradise deep in the mountains—those days were over. It was like it is now, expensive and crawling with stunned tourists.” Patricia pauses to sip her wine. “And there we were, just four more stunned tourists. That’s how it goes with me. By the time I find out about a place, it’s already not good anymore. Let’s keep going north, I say, to the next good place. Eventually we’ll have to be the ones to get there first. But nope. This is our spot, that’s what Steven said. And now we’re committed to Coalton, for a chill mil.”
I close my eyes while they talk. These two laugh easily with each other.
Don’t you believe in love at first sight, Lucy?
Oh, Eli, it’s the only kind of love I do believe in.
I wonder if Lucy would say the same about friendship. Friendship at first sight.
Lucy with Nicholas—always quiet and tense—becomes animated only when she’s mad, and then she gets mean. But this Lucy shines, the way she does when Sam’s around. I don’t know if it’s the wine or the idea of a new friend that gives Lucy this shine. Maybe both.
There’s no sign of Mary today. But I’m not looking, either, even if part of me does miss her. Part of me has always missed her, actually.
“Even Gracie is onto Steven,” Patricia says. “Her class did a unit on needs versus wants. You need water; you want beer, you need food; you want treats, you need shelter; you want an X-box. ‘Do you need a heated garage, Dad? Or do you want it? Do you want carbon rim tires on your bike? Or do you need them?’ Even Gracie knows. For Steven, every want is a need.”
Neither of them appears to notice when Nicholas’s work truck pulls into the driveway. They’re slow to turn even after he steps through the side door into the kitchen. At first I think he’s sick too, like me. Grey skin hangs loosely around his eyes and at his jowls. When he leans against the door frame to take off his boots, I realize he’s only tired. In a way I don’t quite understand, I remember the same deadening exhaustion at the end of each of my workdays at the mine. Too often, Nicholas looks this way after work—not like the fresh-faced Nicholas who takes Eli walking in the woods.
His eyes fall on Patricia’s mug, then Lucy’s, then the empty bottle. “Any of that left for me? It’s been a day.”
That’s all the encouragement Lucy needs to go in search of more wine. She runs down to the cold cellar and digs out two bottles. “White,” she says, washing the dust off them under the kitchen tap. She’s grabbing Nicholas a mug when his eyes land on me, mostly tucked under my blanket.
“Nah, you know what?” He keeps his gaze on me. “Count me out. I’ve been on a bit of a roll with the no drinking. Might as well keep it going. Eli, why don’t we go for a walk, leave these two to their talk? Looks like you and I could both use some fresh air.” He sets a hand on Lucy’s shoulder and kisses her near the ear.
Nicholas likes to figure things out while he’s moving. There’s a Latin phrase for that, Lucy told me, solvitur ambulando. It’s solved by walking. Nicholas most often walk-thinks alone, maybe to figure out Lucy or to decide how he really feels about the robins and the Migratory Bird Act and the coal mine.
This time, Nicholas hurries me into some running shoes and a sun hat, pulling me along like if I take too long he’s going to find himself sitting at the table with that mug of wine and two full bottles. I guess he and I are going to solvitur ambulando together this evening. I expect him to take me to the old mining town, the one swallowed by time. He likes to show me the smallness of our problems, the way everything that seems important to us now will eventually be dust—the foundations of Elijah’s house, the train tracks down the hill, the stores where we buy our food and wine. Even Mrs Evanhart’s school. None of it will last.
Instead of walking west, though, he gestures me into his truck and drives east of town. Nicholas hardly ever talks when he drives. Lucy hates road-tripping with him. Talk is the whole point of road-trips as far as she’s concerned. Even when we’
re at home, he prefers quiet after work. It takes some time for his day to settle, he says. Lucy loves to talk and often when he comes through the door at five o’clock, he’s the first adult she’s seen all day. She finds quiet hard. She doesn’t understand Nicholas’s need for silence, but I try to. This evening, he doesn’t even turn on the radio as we drive out of town. We just listen to the tires go round and round against the pavement. It’s okay with me. Ten minutes down the highway, he pulls off on the gravel road that leads to Sam’s trees, the old-growth black cottonwoods. This walk isn’t Nicholas’s style—a wooden boardwalk with detailed signs providing a guided tour. He likes to go off-trail, to make his own way. Plus, he’s never shown an interest in cottonwoods, “the weeds of the forest.” I wonder why he’s brought me here.
He jumps out of the truck, taking long strides to the trailhead without waiting for me. Lucy would hold my hand, but Nicholas has never been much of a toucher. He might put a hand on my shoulder while we read the trailhead sign. He’s more into power-punches and high-fives than hugs.
The big sign tells us the boardwalk loops in a two-kilometre trail through the world’s largest cottonwoods, the oldest dating as far back as four hundred years and towering as high as a ten-storey building. The wind picks up in short violent gusts and the cottonwood leaves crinkle when they blow. That one rain storm did nothing to quench the land. Nicholas says we need a week straight of soaking rain before the Forest Service will lift this year’s fire ban. He predicts the ban will stick until the end of November, maybe until the snow falls, if we even get snow this year. I wonder if people will eventually quit talking about the weather. It’s hot. It’s dry. There’s not much more to say.
Nicholas starts down the trail, so I follow. His footsteps echo loud on the wooden boardwalk. At the next sign, Nicholas puts his hand on my shoulder and reads aloud:
It’s not unlike a cathedral. You have the massive trunks of these big, big Cottonwoods, with a canopy of bright brilliant green leaves about fifty metres above you. When you look up, it’s dizzying. The trees have the most spectacular, deeply furrowed bark, and the tops of the old goliaths are all gnarled and natty from four centuries of lightning strikes.
—Samuel Browning, Ktunaxa
I look away from Nicholas to the trees, measuring them against Sam’s description. These trees don’t make me dizzy. Life sometimes makes me dizzy, but I could stand here forever breathing in these trees.
“This project ... the trees ...” Nicholas releases my shoulder and shoves both of his hands deep in his pockets. “They’re part of our neighbour’s work. He’s this scientist, this ... expert on cottonwoods.”
He’s other things too, I want to say. If Nicholas spent more time at home and less at the mine, he would know he doesn’t need to tell me what Sam is or isn’t. Sam’s my friend. I know what he’s an expert on. I only nod.
“You call him Sam, right? I get the feeling your mom has gotten to be pretty good friends with him. Am I right?”
I can see Nicholas’s pain, but I’m surprised to find it means nothing to me. It feels so far away, like it’s in the future. Nicholas waits a long time after that question. He’s not going to let me get away with silence. I give a small shrug and shuffle my feet, but still he waits.
“I guess,” I say. “Yeah, sure.” The wind rattles the leaves above us. Nicholas says nothing, but something in his face makes me say more. “Sam and Lucy hang out a bit. I hang out with him too, while you’re at work. Lucy wants to make sure I’m okay over there. She’s not crazy about me hanging out with his niece Mary. I guess because she doesn’t talk.” I won’t say because she’s brown. “Sam’s nice. You would like him.” I don’t really think Sam and Nicholas would like each other at all, but I say it anyways.
Nicholas swings his eyes up quickly and stares at the canopy of leaves above us. I do that same motion sometimes: hold my head funny with my forehead pointed at the sky and neck cramped back. I do it when I’m trying to stop tears from rolling out my eyes. It works, usually. But Nicholas does not cry, ever. Without saying anything, he starts down the boardwalk. I follow.
“You three went to the museum, I heard. You and Lucy and this Sam guy.”
I can barely make out Nicholas’s words as he walks away from me, the wind loud in the trees all around us. I know my voice won’t make it all the way up the boardwalk to Nicholas, so again I say nothing.
“Did you learn anything about Elijah?” Nicholas stops on the boardwalk. “At the museum. Anything new?”
I don’t like to think about that day at the museum. I didn’t even go to the Elijah phone, but I don’t tell Nicholas so. He’ll want to know why, and I can’t answer without mentioning Mary. He won’t want to hear about that Mary.
I picture Lucy stopping for a minute in front of Elijah’s photograph: He stands on the church steps in a stiff-looking suit buttoned right up to his neck. I know what that phone would have said anyway, pretty much, so I tell the story to Nicholas.
“The display talked about Elijah being a founding father of Coalton, the hard work he did in the mines, the community work in the church and with the early sports teams, the hard years with the fires and the bad explosions at the mine.” I rattle it off like I’m doing a speech at school. “It talked about times at the mine being so slow that they only ran three days a week, until the war made a new need for steel—at the same time that it took all the young single men to Europe. It said how Elijah didn’t go to war because of his leg injury and because of his family and that he moved up to foreman while other men were gone and how he proved himself a fit leader by going into the mine again after the 1916 explosion and pulling his workers out and not worrying about if he could have got hurt himself. It talked about his wife and his two kids. Something about him coming from Ontario and before that Italy or somewhere. The usual stuff about the hard times, the way those of us lucky to live in Coalton today could never understand the tough life of the people who started this city ...” I trail off and shrug, you know, as if I could talk forever, but really I’m running out of stuff I know from the stories Nicholas has told me.
“Eli, there’s one part of Elijah’s background I’ve never told you.” Nicholas pauses and my stomach does a flip. “He didn’t come from Italy. A lot of Italian Catholics did settle here, and Poles and Ukrainians. Elijah let people believe what they wanted. The Poles thought he was Italian. The Italians thought he was Polish. His dark skin made Italian the obvious guess, but his blue eyes confused everyone. I don’t know if Elijah even had to tell it one way or another—had to lie—or if he just left people to guess.” Nicholas pulls his jacket tighter across his chest against the wind’s moaning. “I always knew where Elijah came from, though. I also knew we weren’t supposed to talk about it. We had a script. I hold onto it even now. When I started at the mine, The Coalton Free Press wanted a story on my connection to the town’s founding father. The journalist asked me where Elijah came from, and I said ‘Nobody in my family talked about that. Coalton was Elijah’s home. He made it his home.’ I don’t know why, even then, I couldn’t tell the truth. The article said ‘It is not known where Elijah Mountain came from before Ontario. However, his swarthy complexion suggests he was, like so many of Coalton’s first peoples, Italian.’” Nicholas laughed. “You can imagine Lucy’s letter to the paper on that. ‘Dear Editor, the Italians were not Coalton’s first peoples!’”
I let myself smile, picturing Lucy at the kitchen table, writing so hard into the paper that each of her words left a mark on the table underneath. But I don’t laugh aloud. I don’t want to interrupt Nicholas. “When I was in grade six,” he continues, “we did a section on religion. I started to put two and two together, to think about where my great-grandfather was from, the kind of food he ate. My great-grandmother Ursula was still alive then. She lived with us. She used to make special food she learned to make just for him, from his country. I asked her one day, ‘GG, was your husband a Muslim?’”
Nicholas says it wr
ong. Muzz-Lim. I want to correct him: Musslim. Muss like Puss. But how would I know? I stay quiet.
“I’ll never forget her expression. I might as well have suggested she’d married the devil. But then she got quiet, thinking hard. After a while, she added in a hard voice, ‘He believed in God like we all do. He had a different word for Him.’ She had gotten to an age where she couldn’t always remember the words for things. ‘Allah!’ she said. ‘Elijah called him Allah!’” Nicholas laughs, and I think he’s forgotten his bad day at the mine and whatever trouble he thinks he has with Sam and Lucy. He looks more like my dad-a-tat.
I smile at him and slide my hand into his. I hope he’ll let me leave it there. “So Elijah was Muslim then?” I copy his way of saying Muzz-Lim so as not to pull him from his story. Elijah was a Muslim. I feel nothing as I say it. I am not surprised.
He nods. “A Muslim from Syria, not a Catholic from Italy.”
We twist our way quietly through the forest after that. I like the boardwalk. It’s solid and flat. My legs don’t ache. My lungs still have that heavy burn, though, and it feels here to stay. I breathe deeply through my nose and take in the dusty earth, the crisp leaves. The smells remind me of Mary. The moan of the wind in the trees echoes her song in the daisy field: Eye ya ah nuss hewk zoo kah nee.
I feel her in that moan, high above our heads, but she doesn’t scare me anymore. I sing the sad song along with her. In my mind: Eye ya ah nuss hewk zoo kah nee.
