Bridget and I clapped vigorously. “I’m so proud of you, Wynona!” I meant it. I was impressed by the progress she had made in a few short months.
“B-plus is the highest mark I’ve ever got,” Wynona told us shyly.
“Are you enjoying school more now?”
“Yeah. I still don’t like most of the white kids, except for this one girl named Tara, but at least now I have a plan. Well, sort of a plan, anyways.”
“Can you tell us what it is?”
“I talked to Hilary — she’s the Aboriginal support worker at school — and she told me about this program they got in university, where I can study to be a health care worker and then I can come back and work on the reserve. She said it’s a real good course. They have First Nations elders there who teach young people about the plants and stuff that they use for healing. I wanna be a medicine woman like my great-grandmother.”
“Oh, Wynona! What a wonderful idea!”
“University is free for us, you know. Our chiefs negotiated that in the treaty that they signed. Free education, free health care, no taxes. That was the deal.”
“Your chiefs were very wise. I’m glad your people got something out of it, since they lost so much.”
“Hilary said I could do all kinds of things if I wanted. I could be a nurse, or I could be a midwife, helping babies being born. I could study how traditional medicine helps people with drug and alcohol problems. I could even be a doctor.”
“Annie Bearspaw would be so proud of you. In fact, I believe she is proud of you. She’s probably smiling down at you right now.”
Suddenly, there was a third voice in the room. My head turned so sharply I almost dislocated my neck.
“Fizzy has a sore foot,” Bridget piped up in her sweet little voice. “Maybe if we smudged him with sweetgrass, it would help.”
There was a hush. I wanted to scream with joy but I was afraid to say a word.
“We’d better ask your mother about that.” Wynona’s face remained expressionless, but there was a quirk at the corner of her mouth.
I fought to keep my voice steady. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to start any fires outside since the grass is so dry. Why don’t you bring him here and let Wynona check his foot since she wants to be a healer someday?”
Bridget jumped off her chair and ran to fetch Fizzy from the bedroom. Wynona and I exchanged incredulous looks. I don’t know which of us wore the biggest grin.
April 30, 1925
Yesterday I saved our beloved Wildwood from burning into a worthless pile of cinders. George was away helping John McKay with the seeding. It was a bright sunshiny day, but after lunch I noticed the unmistakable scent of smoke on the wind and then a blue haze in the air. Sure, and wasn’t it a fire approaching from the east!
We have been worried for weeks about the dryness of the spring conditions. There is so much dead wood in the area, and the grass from last fall is brittle and high as my horse’s belly. From the upstairs window I watched the eastern sky through the field glasses, praying for a shower of rain, but the haze became thicker, and the smell of burning grass very strong. At last through the billows of smoke I caught the first glimpse of a scarlet snake eating its way across the stubble.
I rushed downstairs and looked around me, seeing nothing that would not burn — wooden house, log barn filled with seed wheat, haystack, woodpile, and even the straw spread around the barn for the livestock, and everything as dry as kindling.
My first thought was for the animals. I turned them loose and they headed for the creek, along with every other living thing. Even the rabbits and mice scampered through the long grass toward the water.
We had two gunny sacks in the barn, set aside for such a fearsome day, each containing a few pounds of grass to give the bottom some weight. I soaked these in the creek and carried them out to the field. The writhing, flaming serpent was moving rapidly toward me, leaving a charred black wasteland behind. I concentrated on the nearest end of the snake, flying from the creek to the fire, beating the flames until my arms felt like lead. At last I was successful in turning it toward the creek, where it burned down to the water’s edge and expired with a hiss.
I then attacked the other end of the snake. This was farther away, and my legs grew weary running back and forth to the creek, carrying the heavy wet sacks. The air was so filled with smoke that the sun looked orange. I could barely see through the tears and the sweat running into my eyes. A shower of grey ash coated my head and shoulders.
Each time I glanced over my shoulder I saw the distance between the fire and the house growing smaller. At last we were only a few yards away from the windbreak. My back was up against the trees as I fought the flames with renewed frenzy, screaming aloud in my fear.
Suddenly a welcome gust of wind sprang from behind me, whipping my hair around my head and driving the flames backward into the dead black place. Without fuel they quickly sputtered and died. It was surely the act of God I had been praying for.
Half dead myself by this time, I spent another hour extinguishing the embers before I dragged myself inside and collapsed onto the sofa. There my poor husband found me, still covered with ashes.
George said when he saw the smoke in the distance, he made poor King gallop like never before. He was so relieved to find me safe that he nearly wept. After he had inspected the yard to make sure no spark was yet living, he took off my dirty clothes, filled the tin tub with hot water, and washed my hair. I tried to help, but my arms were too weak to lift over my head.
“Talk about the fighting Irish!” he said.
I’m an awful sight with my eyelashes and most of my eyebrows gone, but ’twas a small price to pay.
Oh, to lose everything now, after all our labours! The barn full of grain, the fruit trees we planted in the garden, and most of all, my precious house and all my belongings. Perhaps it is wicked of me to care so much for material possessions. Of course I know that they are only things, but they are MY things.
I now understand for the first time why wars are fought over land. I would battle to the death for my little corner of the earth. Nothing will ever make me give up this farm. It is as much a part of me now as the blood in my veins.
Gently I closed the diary and stared into the fireplace while I imagined the flames consuming this house and everything in it. I was seated in one of the comfortable armchairs, and I turned to face the empty chair across from me, imagining that Mary Margaret was sitting there, watching me in the flickering firelight, staring into my soul with her piercing blue eyes.
What in the world would she think about me?
I was quite sure that I knew the answer. She didn’t turn tail and run back to Ireland just because she had almost frozen to death with her foot in a trap, or because a fire had nearly destroyed her home. Close calls were part and parcel of surviving in this hostile environment — even today.
Besides, Mother Nature wasn’t trying to kill us now. This was a different world, a warm, inviting, benevolent world. It was May 3 and we only had ninety-eight days to go.
Ninety-eight days between us and $1.5 million.
I leaned forward and stared at the empty chair across from me as I made a silent promise. For the next three months we would honour Mary Margaret’s love for the land. We would make the most of the wild beauty all around us. We would create memories that would last a lifetime.
Then we would sell the farm and go back to Arizona where we belonged.
Days remaining: ninety-eight.
24
June
We drove slowly to town on the first day of June as if we were tourists travelling through another country. It seemed like another planet. Bridget sat quietly, her nose pressed to the window.
The green fields moved constantly, dipping and rolling like waves on the sea. The poplars laughed in their new leafy gowns. Clouds of white daisies, brown-eyed Susans, and purple-pointed spikes of fireweed filled the ditches.
Suddenly, I saw an emerald
meadow filled with shaggy, hump-backed animals. I pulled over to the side of the road.
“Bridget, those are buffalo! They used to live here a long time ago, before people chased them away.” I didn’t want to tell her they had been slaughtered by the millions. Now local ranchers were raising them for domestic consumption, their meat considered a delicacy.
“So this is where the buffalo roam!” Bridget crowed delightedly. “They roam right here in our home!”
We watched the buffalo calves frolicking with their tails in the air. The mothers stared at us impassively, tufts of hair hanging from their chins, looking like bearded ladies in a circus.
Finally we approached the broad river valley. Its folded banks were green and verdant, darker streaks of heavy vegetation following the gullies where dozens of blue creeks gushed into the blue river below.
Juniper was lovelier than we had ever seen it. The entire population seemed to be outdoors, working in their gardens and washing their trucks and painting their fences. The wide boulevards were banked with blooming flowers. Two children on bicycles waved to us, and Bridget surprised me by waving back. Trucks stopped in the middle of the streets, idling, while their drivers chatted through rolled-down windows. There was a grin on every face.
Except Lisette’s. When we opened the door to the lawyer’s office, she didn’t greet us with her usual radiant smile. Although she was wearing a pink and orange tropical print sundress with a plunging neckline, and her pompadour of curls was as high as ever, her face was pale and her lipstick was worn off as if she had been biting her lips.
“Molly!” She stood up and wrung her hands together.
For the first time Bridget smiled shyly before scampering off to the corner.
“Hi, Lisette! How are you?” I glanced at her desk, but there was no book in sight.
Without answering, she reached into her drawer and pulled out the usual sealed envelope. She gripped it tightly and seemed reluctant to give it to me.
“Is something wrong, Lisette?”
“Oh, no.” She looked out the front window, avoiding my eyes. “I’m just, you know, a little down in the dumps.”
“I didn’t think anybody could be in a bad mood in this glorious weather.”
“Yeah, Wildwood must look stunning right now. It’s such beautiful country up there. But I’ll sure be sorry to see you go back to Arizona. I was kind of hoping you would change your mind and stick around.”
Bridget stopped colouring and looked at me sharply. She hadn’t mentioned Arizona for months. For her it was as if the place had never existed.
I didn’t have to answer because Lisette kept speaking. “Actually, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here myself!” She laughed unhappily. “Mr. Jones and I haven’t exactly been seeing eye to eye.”
“What’s the problem, Lisette?”
“I’m a little confused about something. But don’t worry, I’ll figure it out.” She suddenly stopped twisting the envelope in her hands and thrust it at me. Her usually flawless pink nail polish was chipped.
After I tucked it into my bag, I turned my back toward Bridget and lowered my voice. “I’d like to use your phone so I can book our return flight to Phoenix. We only have two months left, and I think we’re going to make it, touch wood.”
“Oh, sure, you can use the office. I’m sure Mr. Jones won’t mind.” Lisette still hadn’t cracked a smile, and I noticed that she hadn’t called him Franklin. She led the way into the inner office and closed the door. I sat down at the oak desk and called the airline to reserve our tickets.
It was the longest day of the year in Wildwood.
I stood up straight to ease my aching back. I had been hunched over in the garden for several hours and had lost track of the time. It was so easy to do on these bright evenings.
We had eaten supper, but the sun was still high in the heavens. According to the kitchen calendar, the sun would set at 10:41 p.m. Long after it disappeared, the west would glow with reflected light. Around midnight it would finally get dark, and only four hours later, the sky would lighten again.
I lowered myself onto the weathered log bench. The wooden planks were aged, dried hard in the sun and the snow and the wind, their knotholes like age spots on an old woman’s hands. The bench was angled to face the flourishing honeysuckle in the corner of the garden, and not for the first time, I wondered why. The honeysuckle was a beautiful thing, laden with tiny blooms like pale-pink snow. A hummingbird darted among the blossoms. But why wouldn’t the bench face toward the creek and the bright fields instead?
Bridget sat down beside me, magnifying glass in hand. She spent hours examining flowers and insects with it, often calling me to come and see. I watched her now as she idly flicked away a grasshopper that landed on her bare leg.
“You aren’t afraid of bugs now, Bridget.”
She looked up at me with a serious expression. “I’m not afraid of anything now.”
It was true. Yesterday we sat on the window seat upstairs and watched a thunderstorm pass over the fields. The black clouds boiled together like a witch’s cauldron, and jagged forks of blue-white lightning shattered the sky.
“Mama, can we go outside and play in the lightning?” Bridget asked.
“No, darling, that isn’t safe.”
I remembered watching a storm from our balcony in Arizona when Bridget had cried with fright: “Mama, close the window so the lightning can’t come in!”
After the rain passed, the sun burst forth like an explosion. The poplar branches were spangled with gleaming teardrops of rain hanging from each leaf. A vibrant rainbow arched across the sky, the colours so distinct that we could count all seven of them, so close that Bridget insisted one end must be resting in the beaver pond.
I looked at her fondly. In spite of wearing sunhats and sunscreen whenever we ventured outside, she had freckles on her nose, just like me. Our fair skin never tanned. I smiled to myself as I remembered my father’s words. “Never mind, Mavourneen, you’ll be a beautiful old lady with porcelain skin when all the other women have faces like saddles.”
At the time, I had not been comforted. I wasn’t the least interested in old people or how they looked. But now I understood that they weren’t a race apart, but simply people who had been born sooner and lived longer.
“I love this garden, Mama.” Bridget leaned over and pulled a weed from a nearby clump of flowers — at least I hoped it was a weed.
“Me, too.” I rose from the bench and bent to my work again. It was pointless, because we wouldn’t be here when it was ready to harvest, but the phenomenal growth of the plants drew me like a magnet. Mealtimes and bedtimes alike were forgotten as I hacked down dead plants and lifted the soil with a fork so the tiny shoots below could breathe. They weren’t tiny for long. Everything sprouted overnight, as if nature had drunk a magic elixir.
We were already eating salads of tender green lettuce and rosy radishes. “That tastes like more!” Bridget crowed, as she passed her bowl for another helping.
In the corner was a patch of original potatoes, what we now called heritage potatoes. And I had made a new discovery of thick green sprouts with purple-tipped heads. Domestic asparagus, still flourishing after many decades.
The grain, too, was rising to meet the sky. The field across the creek, so lovely last year when covered with pale golden wheat, was even more striking this year. Now it was a solid mass of yellow canola blooms. Yellow as lemons, yellow as canaries, yellow as sunshine — no comparison did it justice.
Already the farmers were talking about a high yield, at least fifty bushels to the acre. Roy Henderson had told me how to identify a bumper crop: throw your cap into the field and see if the grain is thick enough to keep it on the surface. I wanted to try it.
As I cast aside another armful of weeds, I heard an unfamiliar sound. Human voices. Men’s voices. They were coming from the direction of the creek. My first thought was that Colin was nearby. I straightened up quickly, one hand in the s
mall of my back. “Bridget, I’m going down to the creek for a few minutes.”
I left her chasing a cloud of white cabbage butterflies while Riley ran in circles around her feet. The evening sun cast purple shadows across the thick green grass, polka-dotted with yellow dandelions.
In the still of the evening there was no other sound but the melody of birdsong. The creek murmured quietly, as if singing a lullaby. Along its banks were masses of pink blooms shedding their sweetness into the air. The wild rose was Alberta’s signature flower. It was both beautiful and brave enough to survive this harsh climate. I hurried along the path toward the beaver dam, where the sound of the voices grew louder.
“Are you ready?” An unfamiliar young man in an orange hard hat came into view. He was standing in front of a tripod planted on the nearest bank of the creek, bending his head over an instrument. At first I thought it was a camera. In the distance was another man in a hard hat, leaning over another tripod.
I walked up behind him. “Excuse me, but what are you doing?”
He started with surprise. “Gosh, you scared me! I didn’t think there was anybody for miles around.”
“I live here.”
“Where? There’s nothing here but that abandoned house.”
“It isn’t abandoned. I live in it, with my daughter.”
He frowned, pushing his hard hat back to reveal his white forehead. “But we were told the farm was deserted; that’s why we came out here tonight. We’re surveying the property.”
“And why are you doing that?”
“We work for One Way Energy and the survey is part of the pre-sale agreement with the lawyer, Franklin Jones. He’s acting on behalf of the client. I guess that would be you.”
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