Wake The Stone Man

by Carol McDougall

  “Still, that’s a big freakin window,” Frank said. “Hard to keep the heat in with a window like that.”

  “I don’t want to be stuck in a box in the middle of the bush with no windows,” Mary said.

  Frank leaned back in his chair till I thought it would topple over. “Yeah, well you’ll change your mind next winter when you’re freezing your fuckin nuts off.”

  Tom puffed on his pipe and said nothing. Someone put a record on in another room and I suddenly realized they had electricity. Don’t know why I didn’t notice that earlier. I mean refrigerator, electric lights, stereo — didn’t take a genius to see they had power. There was a woodstove in the kitchen though.

  “You heat with wood?” I asked.

  “Oil mostly,” Rita said. “There’s a space heater in the other room. I like to cook on wood though. What about you?”

  “Wood. I heat with wood.”

  I was amazed at how Celeste could close out everyone in the room. She was drawing a long low house with a straw roof that sat in an open field. There were two elephants at the edge of the picture.

  “I like that. It’s really good,” I whispered to her. I didn’t want to break her concentration.

  “No, it’s not. I don’t have brown. I need a brown crayon.”

  “Do you ever use paint?”

  “I just have crayons.”

  “I could bring you some watercolour paint. Then you could mix the right colour.”

  She thought awhile before she replied. “I think that would be good.”

  I left as soon as I finished my stew. I thanked Rita for the food and she told me to come back any time.

  When I was outside I realized that no one except Rita seemed to notice me leaving. As I skied down the driveway I saw there was a sign on the mailbox — it said Cripple Creek Farm.

  ***

  I went back the next week with watercolour paints and brushes. There were more people there and I couldn’t keep them all straight. Probably didn’t matter. I figured they must be used to people coming and going all the time.

  Frank was lying on one of the mattresses in the front room reading Milton Acorn out loud. His artificial leg was on the floor beside him, and I could see his stump, wrapped in a tensor bandage, just a few inches below his bent knee. His voice was deep and rough. “In the elephant’s five-pound brain the whole world’s both table and shithouse.” He put the book down. “Fuckin amazing.” He started to read aloud again to no one in particular.

  Rita was in the kitchen at the woodstove stirring a big pot of something.

  “Hi, I brought the paints for Celeste.”

  “She’s upstairs. Go on up.”

  On the way up the stairs I pushed past Tom coming down, pipe still in his mouth. At the top of the stairs there were four doors. I stood listening. I don’t know what I was listening for — the sound of Celeste drawing? I opened one door a crack and saw two bodies moving around like a clump of clay on a pottery wheel. I closed the door and was about to go back downstairs when I noticed a curtain at the end of the hall. Celeste was inside stretched out on the floor building a castle with wooden blocks. The baby was asleep in a crib against the wall.

  “I brought you the watercolour paints,” I said.

  “I know. You said you would.”

  “Do you have some paper?”

  Celeste went to a shelf of wooden crates under the window and came back with a stack of paper. We sat cross-legged on the floor and painted for an hour or more. She was drawing the house again. Said it was her house in Africa and she was going to live there because it was hot and she wouldn’t ever be cold again like she was in this house.

  “What’s that big box in the front of the house?”

  “It’s for food for the lions and elephants who are going to visit me,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  “They won’t want to come inside the house so I will feed them outside.”

  “I think they’ll like that.”

  “And monkeys too. And maybe giraffes.”

  “What will you feed the giraffes?”

  Celeste didn’t answer but she started to draw something in the branches of a tall tree.”

  “What is that?”

  “A table.”

  “In the tree?”

  “Yes. I will climb up in the tree and put food on the table for the giraffes.”

  “Good idea.” When I looked up I saw Rita standing in the doorway looking at Celeste.

  She was smiling. “Hey, honey.” She sat down on the floor and gathered her daughter into her arms. “I love your drawing. What’s that in the tree?

  “That’s a table for the giraffe.”

  “My clever girl,” she said, kissing Celeste on the forehead.

  “I’m going to draw a zebra for you. Because it’s your favourite.”

  “Beautiful.” Rita nuzzled her face in Celeste’s hair and they sat cuddling. “Stay for supper, Molly.”

  “Thanks, but I have to ski back before dark.” I looked outside and saw the sun was setting. “I should head back now.”

  “I’ll drive you back later. Stay. I’m making spaghetti.”

  I didn’t want to stay. But I didn’t want to go either. I liked being in the warm house with the smell of food wafting through the rooms. I liked painting with Celeste and I was starting to like being around people. “OK, thanks.” I said.

  ***

  Shortly after that the baby woke up howling. Mary came up to get him and told us supper was ready. When we were packing up the paints Celeste handed me her drawing. “That’s for you Molly. Put it up on your wall.”

  “I will.”

  “You can come to Africa with me.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “I can’t go now.”

  “No, but when you do I’ll come to visit you.”

  Downstairs in the kitchen Mary was nursing the baby. The table was full. I noticed Frank had his leg back on. I sat down between Celeste and Lars.

  There was a pot of spaghetti and garlic bread and salad. Bottle after bottle of wine was opened and joints were rolled and passed around. The room was hot with bodies and steam from the pasta and smoke from the joints, and my face felt flushed from the heat and the wine. Someone put on a record. The Band.

  Lars turned to me. “Where you from?”

  “Fort McKay. You?”

  “Nipigon.”

  “So Jesus Christ is alive and well and living in Nipigon.”

  Lars laughed.

  “Are you a Finlander?” I asked.

  “Swede.”

  “Do you live here?”

  “No, just hanging out for awhile.”

  “Is that your guitar?” I could see a guitar lying against the wall behind him.

  “Yeah.” After dinner he played a few of his own songs on the guitar and he was good. Later, when Rita was about to drive me home, Lars took the keys from her hand. We didn’t talk on the ride to my place, but it was comfortable. Before he drove off he said, “We’re having a party on Friday. Send off for Tom. Come.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I’ll pick you up.”

  I thought for a moment. I was really starting to enjoy my time at Cripple Creek Farm. “OK,” I said.

  chapter sixteen

  I was working on a new painting of Nakina. From a photo I’d taken the day we’d been out in the boat with Dad, with her hair blowing across her face and the water blue behind her. I was sketching out her profile. Long straight nose and high cheekbones. Her lips were open slightly. She had a strong chin. I don’t think I’d noticed that before. A straight line from her jaw, which angled to a strong squared chin. The chin slightly prominent. A look of determination.

  After a while I took a break and sat at the table reading through more of the
papers from the school. A report from the Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs:

  I submit the following report from my visit to the St. Mary’s Residential School in Fort McKay Ontario, July 16, 1936.

  Curriculum — The school is working to prepare the students for positions in domestic service and farming. I was witness to the students attending to their chores inside the school and was impressed with the high standards of cleanliness. Girls are given training in home economics, including meal preparation and kitchen hygiene. I observed boys in the school gardens where they were taught crop cultivation.

  Rooms — classrooms, dining rooms, recreation rooms, sleeping dormitories all scrupulously clean

  Dress — neat and clean in dress and appearance. Apparently happy and well nourished. I took lunch with the Archbishop and was presented with a good meal consisting of roast of beef, potatoes and vegetables from the school garden.

  I put the report down. I remembered one morning when my dad had made porridge for breakfast and Nakina refused to eat it. Said the nuns made them eat cold porridge every morning at the residential school. They called it gruel, and sometimes it had bugs in it.

  I looked at the report again. I doubted if any of the kids at the school that day were fed a nice meal of roast beef and potatoes like the superintendent was.

  Another letter from 1949 was sent to the Department of Indian Affairs from a priest in the Fort McKay parish. Father Morrow gave the department authority to pick up three children, Joseph, Raymond and Paul Jackpine, from Perrault Falls. “The three children,” said Father Morrow, “can be picked up as early as possible for enrollment at St. Mary’s Residential School. The older boy Joseph is nine years of age, and his brother Raymond is eight years of age. The youngest child, Paul, is the illegitimate child of Rebecca Jackpine, the mother, who is an individual of low mentality. The father, Frank Jackpine, I am told, does not want the children. It is a common finding that Indian parents have no interest in raising their own children and so it is in their best interest to be enrolled at the school.”

  I crumpled the letter in my hands. More goddamned government propaganda to justify the stealing of children.

  I looked up at my first painting of Nakina, in the Lorna Doone. Nakina bent forward. Looking distant and worried. I stood up and grabbed a brush. I painted out her head and shoulders with white paint, and then, working fast, I painted her shoulders an inch higher, more rounded, heavier. I curved the neck so her head hung lower. That was it. I had caught Nakina in a rare moment when she didn’t know she was being watched. A moment when I could see the weight of worry pressing down on her.

  ***

  Lars arrived the following Friday and I invited him in.

  “These yours?” He was looking at the paintings on the windowsill.

  “I’m just playing around.”

  “I like it. That’s First Avenue?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And Mary Christmas. I like the red lips.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah. Beautiful. Who’s this?”

  “My friend.”

  “At the Lorna Doone?”

  “It’s not finished. Still trying to get the face right.”

  “Hey, let me help with that.” I was struggling to get my arm into the plucked beaver coat and Lars held it up for me.

  “Thanks. I don’t have anything to bring to the party. Is that OK?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Rita has a ton of food cooking and Frank and I did a beer run this morning.”

  Lars stood in front of the painting of Nakina. Finally he turned to me and said, “It’s good.”

  We talked a bit in the car, about painting and music and writing songs. Lars turned on the radio. It was comfortable talking with him.

  “Where is she now?” he asked when we were heading down the Silver Falls Road.

  “Who?”

  “Your friend. The one in the painting.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She move away?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure.” The truth was I had been thinking about Nakina all week — wondering if there was any way I could send her a letter. I didn’t know what I’d say. I just wanted to know where she was.

  When we got to Cripple Creek the house was rocking. People were dancing to Moody Blues in the front room, and a couple were making out on the mattress under the “Don’t fuck with Mother Nature” poster. In the kitchen Rita and Mary were cooking. Mary came over and dropped her sleeping baby into my arms. “Glad you made it. Have some wine.”

  Kid in one arm, wine in the other, I sat down and watched the women roll out perogy dough across the table. They had their hair tied back with kerchiefs like the ladies at the Polish legion.

  I didn’t like babies. Didn’t know what to do with them. “What’s the kid’s name?” I asked.

  “Blue.”

  “His name is Blue?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Tom said he had this blue aura when he was born and that it was a sign.”

  “A sign of what?”

  “A sign that his name was Blue.”

  I was thinking maybe he was blue because he wasn’t getting enough oxygen and they should have called him Oxygen.

  “He was born right out there.” She was pointing to the mattress on the floor where the two people were making out.

  Rita stopped cooking and wiped her hands on her apron. “It was amazing. We were all sitting on the floor massaging Mary’s belly and she was screaming and we were screaming with her. It was like we all birthed Blue together, like one big womb pushing him out.”

  I wanted to wipe that happy image out of my head so I headed upstairs to see if I could find Celeste. She was in her room drawing. She seemed glad to see me. I put Blue down in the crib and he didn’t wake up. He seemed like a pretty easygoing kid, which was a good thing for him.

  We drew for a while and then Celeste asked me to read to her.

  “Sure, what do you want me to read?”

  Celeste handed me a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No I’m not.”

  She wasn’t either. Man, she was a straight ahead kid.

  I lay down on the mattress and read to Celeste. She put her head on my chest and looked up at the ceiling. After a while I noticed things were getting louder and crazier downstairs. I could smell perogies frying in onions. Jimmy Hendrix was belting out “Purple Haze” and the air was thick with pot. It was nice lying there reading and after a while we both fell asleep.

  A while later baby Blue woke us with his crying. That kid had good lungs on him. I picked him up, and Celeste and I went downstairs. In the kitchen I handed Blue to his mother and lined up at the stove with my plate. As I was standing there I looked back to see if I could spot Lars. He was in the living room talking to Frank.

  When I got my food I moved into the front room and sat down on a mattress on the floor beside Frank. He had his artificial leg on and his legs were spread straight out in front of him. Frank was really wasted. His shirt was open and he was eating his cabbage rolls with his hands, tomato sauce dripping down his bare chest. Frank and Lars were having a heated discussion about whether Neil Young wrote the song “Helpless” about Fort McKay. Frank said no, and Lars said yes and what did Frank know anyway — he was a Yank.

  To change the subject I asked Frank what he did.

  “I’m a prosthetician,” he said.

  I looked at Frank and he could tell from my stunned expression I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.

  “I make artificial limbs. A prosthetician.”

  I don’t know if it was the wine or the pot or both, but the word prosthetician set me off laughing. Between gasps for air I kept saying “pros-the-tician!”

  Lars grabbed my plate and said he’d get
me more perogies before they were all gone. Frank picked up a book and started reading poems about gods and dogs and dogs and gods, and it occurred to me that dog is god spelled backwards. When Frank started to read a Milton Acorn poem about flying foreskins I went back into the kitchen looking for Lars.

  “Draft Dodger Rag” was playing on the stereo. Seemed appropriate. All the guys at Cripple Creek Farm were dodging the war in Vietnam. Everyone except Lars.

  Lars handed me a plate of perogies and headed out the back door. Out the kitchen window I saw him walking across the field towards the sauna. He walked past Tom, who was talking to some skinny dude with a brush cut, who was waving a book in the air like he was some sort of southern Baptist preacher. Tom seemed angry and I could hear the skinny dude shouting but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  “Who’s that?” I asked Rita.

  “Who? Oh Sid. Friend of Tom’s.”

  “Some friend.”

  Rita turned and looked out the window. Sid was still flailing the book around in front of Tom’s face. “Yeah, bit of an asshole.”

  About an hour later Lars was back. “I got the sauna stoked, it’s almost ready. Get your coat.”

  When I came back he took my hand and led me outside and down a path to the sauna. Lars stripped right away but I was shy. He handed me a towel and I wrapped it around myself and slipped my clothes off underneath. Lars threw water on the rocks and steam filled the room. We moved up to the middle bench.

  Lars lifted the hair from the back of my neck and rubbed my shoulders with birch leaves. Moments later the door of the sauna opened and more people poured in. More hot wet naked bodies scrunched together along the lower bench. Lars and I moved up to the top bench to make room. He put his arm around me and his long hair fell across my shoulder.

  Walking back to the house after the sauna I told Lars I had to get back to my house to stoke the fire and he took the keys to Rita’s truck and drove me home. We didn’t speak in the car but when we got to my house he leaned down, kissed me on the forehead and said he’d see me soon.

  chapter seventeen

  The next morning I stoked the fire and put a pot of water on the stove. There was frost on the inside of the window and it took hours for the kitchen to warm up. While I waited for the water to boil I looked through some of the photos from the residential school. Two photos side by side. On the left a boy about eight with straight black hair that came down to his shoulders. He was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans and was smiling at the camera. The second photo, on the right, the same boy with his hair cut short wearing a white shirt and black pants. In this photo he looked at the camera, or the person holding the camera, with an expression of distrust. Fear? I held the photocopy up in front of me. Someone had taped the two original images together. The nuns? Perhaps to show how much progress they’d made — every trace of Indian scrubbed clean.