Wake The Stone Man

by Carol McDougall

  “Good. Different from high school — I finally feel like I fit in. And there’s interesting stuff going on.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Conceptual art — more concept than form. Hard to explain. Anyway I like the East Coast. I like living beside the ocean. It reminds me of Lake Superior.”

  “I remember…” Nakina paused. She was drifting off again. “I remember in high school you said you were going to go to art school.”

  “Yeah, and you said I was an asshole and would never get out of Fort McKay.”

  “Guess I was wrong.”

  The hospital intercom came on. “Code blue 7B stat, code blue 7B stat.” Two nurses ran down the corridor and into the room across from Nakina’s. There was a brief flurry of activity as an oxygen cart was wheeled into the room, then everything went quiet. When I looked back over at Nakina she was asleep.

  I sat quietly beside her looking at her sleeping face and thought about her hiking in the mountains. I spent the afternoon waiting. Waiting and thinking. Wondering what the end would be like. Afraid but not certain what I was afraid of.

  I got up and walked around the room. Not much to see — a bed, a side table with a box of Kleenex and the jar of clear cream. In the bathroom was a toilet with metal handrails, two boxes of rubber gloves, a metal bedpan and a box labelled “Toothettes.” I opened the box and pulled out a stick with a foam tip and wondered what they were for.

  I looked out the window, out across the harbour. I could see a boat on the horizon. Looked like a grain boat. I wondered if grain was starting to come through the port again.

  I walked down to the family room and spent some time adding pieces to the puzzle. There was a phone there. I dug in my wallet and pulled out the slip of paper with a telephone number and called Lars. It rang three times and went to voice mail. “You have reached Lars Gustoffson, Quetico Park Resource Manager…”

  “Lars,” I said. “This is Molly Bell. I got the message from Merika Goodchild that you bought one of the paintings, and I just wanted to call and say thanks.” I paused for a moment then added, “I’m going to be in town for a while. I don’t know how often you get into Fort McKay, but if you’re around you can usually catch me at George’s at lunchtime. You know, the diner across from the hospital. Anyway, it would be great to see you.”

  ***

  I didn’t recognize Lars at first when he came into George’s Diner. His long blond hair was cut short and his beard was gone. He still wore the round wire-rimmed glasses but he was taller than I remembered.

  “Molly?”

  “Lars.” I stood up to shake his hand and almost knocked my knife onto the floor. He ignored my hand and embraced me.

  “So, you got my message?” I said, sitting down.

  “I did. I’m glad you called.”

  “Almost didn’t recognize you with the short hair.”

  “You look the same. Almost the same. Your hair isn’t as curly.”

  “Longer.” I wore my hair long now, pulled back in one thick braid.

  “So you’re working up in Quetico Park?” I said.

  “Yeah. I’ve been there a few years now.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I do. The people I work with are great and I get to work outside.”

  “What about music? Do you still play?”

  “A bit. Not seriously. My brother and I have a band and we play a few gigs here and there.”

  “How’s your dad? The last time we … well, your dad had broken his arm.”

  “Oh right, he’s fine. I had to stay in Nipigon for a while to help out. I came back after the fire.”

  The fire. I hadn’t spoken with anyone about it for years but sitting with Lars it suddenly felt very raw. “It still feels like a dream to me, like it never happened.”

  “I didn’t make it back for the funeral,” he said.

  “The coffins were so tiny. When they carried the coffins out they played Bob Dylan’s ‘Forever Young’ and I thought how Celeste and Blue would always be young and innocent and perfect … forever.”

  “I was at Cripple Creek the night that Blue was born,” Lars said. “Celeste was about three I think. She was an old soul, even then.”

  “She really was.”

  “I came back the week after to play at the benefit dance. When I got back I drove out to Cripple Creek Farm. I had to see it.”

  “Was anything left?”

  “No, burned to the ground. Nothing but a field of snow. And then I went to your place.”

  I was confused. “But I never saw you.”

  “When I got there some guy came out of the house.”

  “Sid.”

  “Not very friendly. Said you didn’t want to see anyone. I told him about the benefit dance the next night and I asked him to let you know.”

  “He didn’t tell me.”

  “Anyway, after the benefit I went back to Nipigon.”

  “I’m sorry. I wish he had told me. I wish I’d known. You know, no one really told me what happened that night.”

  “There was nothing anyone could do. It was a chimney fire and once the roof caught, the top floor went so fast no one could get upstairs to them.”

  “I was pretty messed up after the fire. I slept a lot. Sid was there then. He drove me home after the funeral and stayed on at the house for a while. He wasn’t there long. Then I moved to Halifax to go to college. I heard that Rita moved back to the States with her parents.”

  “That’s right. Mary moved up north with Tom for a about a year. Last I heard they’d split up and Mary had gone back home.

  “I think I want to go to Cripple Creek someday. Maybe if I could see it … it still feels like a dream.”

  “I’ll take you some time if you want.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You said you were going to be in town for a while.”

  “My friend is in hospital. Cancer. They’ve stopped treatments. She’s in palliative care.”

  “I’m really sorry. Listen, I’m in town most weekends … I’d like to help if I could. Maybe sit with you at the hospital if you like.”

  “That’s very kind. Thanks. By the way, I moved back out to Kamanistiquia.”

  “Really?”

  “Just for the summer. I’m planning to go back to Halifax in the fall to finish my degree. Hey, here is Kikko and Toivo’s number. I stay at their house a lot. Give me a call next time you’re in town. Maybe you could come over to their house for dinner some night. I’d like you to meet them.”

  ***

  The next day Nakina was awake most of the morning, but she seemed far away and didn’t want to talk. I was getting bored sitting there so when the nurse came I helped her get Nakina into the wheelchair, then we stripped the bed. She taught me how to fold a sheet in half and lay it across the middle of the bottom sheet and tuck it in at the sides. Transfer sheet she called it, so that Nakina could be moved or shifted easily by people grabbing either end of the folded sheet. When the bed was made up I sprayed the sheets and pillow with a lavender spray. The nurse told me the smell of lavender was calming.

  I opened the window and let the cool breeze off the lake clean the hospital stink out of the room. We moved Nakina back to the bed, took off her johnny shirt and gave her a sponge bath. I was uncomfortable at first, touching her body, seeing her small empty breasts and the loose skin across her belly, but I watched the nurse. She worked fast and was gentle like she was bathing her own child. I stopped looking at Nakina’s body and began to think of how good the sponge bath must feel to her.

  When we were done I found a soft pink johnny shirt that made Nakina’s skin look less yellow. Nakina didn’t speak while we washed her, and when we were done the nurse gave her morphine and she fell asleep. I sat beside the bed, window still open, white curtains blowing in the breeze. I could sm
ell the lavender and soap. I looked across at her face, her elegant nose, her strong cheekbones, and I thought how beautiful she looked.

  ***

  Toivo drove out to the house with me that afternoon. I wanted to talk to him about the barn. When we got to the house he took his tools out of the truck and went into the kitchen. “I’ll prime the pump for you,” he said. “Let the water run for about a half an hour. The pipes are a mess but that will flush things out.”

  I watched him work and was excited about having running water. I could hook up a hose and run it out to the field to water the garden. We went out and looked at the barn and Toivo agreed with me. “The supporting beams are solid. They’ll be standing for another hundred years,” he said.

  “Can we knock in some bigger windows back here?”

  “No problem. Three, maybe five, right across the back. I had a look at the sauna. You could use a new stove.”

  “You think so?”

  “That one’s starting to rust.”

  “Well, it’s pretty old. You want some tea?”

  “No, I got beer in the truck.”

  We took our beers and walked across the field to check out the sauna. It was good to be there with Toivo. I could learn a lot from him.

  chapter twenty-six

  My exhibition closed at the end of the June. I sold five paintings and the library was interested in buying the Stone Man. I spent a day with Merika taking down the show and packing up the canvases. Most of them were being shipped back to Halifax, but I had decided to keep two of them at the house. And there was one more I didn’t pack.

  I took the painting of Nakina at the Lorna Doone to the hospital with me and placed it on the floor against the wall where I thought she could see it from her bed. When Nakina woke up she looked at me, then at the painting, and said in a thin voice, “Miigwetch.”

  I sat quietly with her for a few hours. Every so often she would say something but I wasn’t sure if she was speaking to me or to someone in the room who I couldn’t see. The veil kept dropping between us.

  Just after she fell asleep her body started to shake. I ran for the nurse.

  Epileptic seizure. I had forgotten. They wrapped her body in warm blankets, and eventually the seizure passed. “You want another blanket?” I asked.

  “Talk to me.”

  “About what?”

  “About Loon Lake. Talk to me about Loon Lake.”

  I rubbed her shoulder and arm.

  “We swam a lot. Remember? And we rowed in the Little Tink. Do you remember the rowboat my dad made?”

  “He liked boats.”

  “And sometimes at night Dad made a bonfire.”

  “We picked blueberries along the tracks.” Nakina said.

  “And Mom made pies.”

  “No, bannock. Blueberry bannock. Lillian taught me how to make blueberry bannock.”

  “That was in Rocky Lake.”

  “You were such an asshole sometimes, eh,” she said, smiling at me.

  I smiled back and kept rubbing her shoulder. She seemed chilled even with all the blankets.

  “Molly?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t bring any goddamn priests in here OK.”

  “OK. No priests. I promise.”

  “I’m not Catholic.”

  “I know.”

  “They tried to make me one. At the residential school. Tried to make me into a good little Catholic girl. Made me pray to the new goddamned pope.”

  “What new pope?” I thought she was slipping behind the veil again.

  “First thing I remember when I got to the residential school. There was a new pope and we had to go to the chapel and pray for Pope John.”

  She slept until the dinner trays arrived. “Do you want me to help you sit up?” I asked.

  “No. I’m not hungry.”

  “You didn’t eat any lunch.”

  “I just want to sleep.”

  Before I left the hospital that night I stopped at the nursing station and let them know Nakina hadn’t touched her dinner. The nurse said it was a sign that her body was getting ready to let go.

  Before heading back out to Kamanistiquia I stopped at the library. If Nakina was right, if the first thing she remembered after going to the residential school was the election of Pope John, then at least that would give me a date. Something I could use to go through the school records.

  It was strange walking into the library again after so many years. I stood for a few minutes beside the stained glass windows of Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare and I remembered the weird, quiet girl who spent so many hours there. The building looked old. The carpets were worn and the furniture was tired and tattered. I found the World Book Encyclopedia ‘P’ and looked under popes. I found him:

  Angelo Roncalli was ordained a priest in 1904 and served in various posts including appointment as Papal Nuncio in several countries, including France (1944). He did much to help Jews during the Holocaust. Pope Pius XII made Roncalli a Cardinal in 1953. Pope John was elected on 28 October 1958 at the age of 77.

  Nineteen fifty-eight. Nakina was almost a year older than me so she would have been about six when she arrived at the residential school. I remembered the records from the residential school — the journals of admissions and discharges. I would search the files to see if I could find a journal of admissions for nineteen fifty-eight.

  ***

  Lars had four days off and came out to the house with me. Toivo and a friend were working on the barn. They put in the windows along the back wall and were reinforcing the floor. Lars worked with them.

  I was out in the garden weeding. It amazed me how hard it was to get things to grow in that damn clay soil, but the weeds seemed to thrive. I could see four lines of green where the potatoes were poking through. We’d have a ton of potatoes in the fall.

  That afternoon we installed the new sauna stove. It took four of us to lift it from the back of the truck. It would last a long time.

  When Toivo and his friend went back to town at the end of the day, Lars stayed on. At night we stoked up the sauna and christened the new stove. Lars got the fire going and I carried wood. “I can’t believe how fast it’s heating up,” I said. “The old stove would have taken twice as long.”

  When the sauna was ready we stepped into the outer room and stripped. I wasn’t shy like I was the first time I’d been with Lars. We sat up on the top bench and after Lars threw a ladle of water on the stones we sat with our heads down, slowly breathing in the hot steam. I had a bar of birch soap Kikko had given me and I scrubbed my arms. Lars took a cloth, lifted my hair and scrubbed my shoulders and back. I could feel my body relaxing but just as I began to let go, a shiver of guilt ran through me. Not now. I couldn’t relax now.

  “Talk to me,” Lars said. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t think I can do it,” I said.

  “Do what?”

  “Help Nakina. I don’t know what to do. There’s so much pain and I don’t know what the fuck to do.” I put my head down and tried to think of how to say what I was feeling. “When I’m there, when I’m at the hospital I don’t want to be there. That’s the truth. I sit for hours and goddamn hours just waiting. I feel like such an idiot sometimes because I don’t know how to help. And I can’t wait to get away, I can’t wait to leave the hospital, and as soon as I leave her I want to go back and be with her. I want to go back and be close to her so she’s not alone. I should be there with her now. I need to get this right. I’ve let her down so many times before, I need to get this right.”

  Lars put his arms around me and when he threw another ladle of water on the stones I let the steam wash away my tears.

  “Maybe all you need is to be there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just be there. Be with her. Maybe that’s
enough.”

  When the fire died down Lars wrapped a towel around me, picked me up and carried me to the house. I didn’t know until that moment how much I needed to be carried.

  That night I dreamt about waking the Stone Man. I dreamt I went down to the wharf with Nakina and I shouted to him. There was a great crashing of rock and he sat up and walked across the water towards us, his footsteps churning up the lake into frothy whitecaps. When he got to the wharf the Stone Man reached his broad hand down and lay it on my head like a blessing. Then he wrapped his granite arms around Nakina’s frail body and took her back out into the lake with him. The lake stilled as he lay down to sleep and I was alone on the wharf. The Stone Man had taken his daughter home.

  ***

  Nakina slept more every day, and when she was awake she seemed far away. She said a lot of things that didn’t make sense and sometimes spoke to people who weren’t there. Sometimes she’d speak in English, then say a few words in Ojibwe. I’d hold her hand and she’d say something to me, then something to people I couldn’t see, then she’d talk to me like I could hear what they just said.

  I sat and held her hand and let her take me into that strange in-between place where she was travelling. It felt peaceful. And in that place of in-between I sometimes felt the presence of my mother and father. There was an energy around us. I didn’t try to understand it — it was enough just to be there.

  I was getting used to the rhythm of the hospital, the long periods of quiet, then the flurry of activity before a change of shift. I got to know the best time to ask for things and when not to bother the nurses. I knew the names of all the cleaning staff and they made such a fuss over Nakina. I was touched by the small kindnesses I saw every day. And I found out what those funny little toothette things were that I’d seen in the bathroom. The nurse taught me how to wet them with water and rinse out the inside of Nakina’s mouth and moisten her lips. It felt good to do something useful.

  Mitch and his wife Marcia and some people from the Friendship Centre came to visit. One day they brought Mr. Bannon, an elder from the Fort McKay reserve. They brought sweetgrass for a smudging ceremony. Marcia and I stood near the door in case a nurse tried to come in. We didn’t think they would approve. Mr. Bannon lit the dried sweetgrass in a shallow stone bowl and with a feather he fanned the smoke over Nakina. He and Mitch spoke some prayers in Ojibwe and Nakina looked to be at peace. For hours afterwards I could smell the musky scent of the sweetgrass.