by Donna Milner
They ride through the empty field in the morning light, Virgil’s dog bringing up the rear. Mist rising from the winding creek rolls across the stubble pasture and between the horses’ plodding feet. When they reach the far fenceline, Virgil leans from his saddle to lift the wooden latch of a gate that Julie wasn’t even aware existed. After the horses step through, and Virgil closes the gate, the mare once again falls in behind the black gelding. They enter the trees, the incline rising with each plodding step through the unfamiliar terrain. Julie turns to look back at the forest closing in behind them, thinking how easily one could get turned around, lost—how quickly she herself has become disoriented, without the lake, logging roads and fences as landmarks to guide her.
She’s glad Virgil knows where he’s going as the horses make their sure-footed way through scrub brush, dry-washes and narrow animal trails. At times Julie has to scrunch right down over the mare’s withers to avoid low branches. And all the while she is trying to find the sweet spot she is certain must be somewhere on the saddle to stop herself from bouncing about so wildly. What idiot ever said a Western saddle was like riding a big old rocking chair?
At first her body instinctually tries posting, as she had done on the English saddles of her childhood, but finds she only creates more airspace between herself and the saddle with each bounce.
She watches Virgil riding ahead, tries to emulate his posture. Unlike her, his shoulders and torso rise and fall in an easy rhythm, while from the waist down he moves as if he is one with the animal between his legs. He holds the reins loose in one buckskin-gloved hand, the other hand rests on his thigh. After a while, Julie’s trial and error imitating of his erect upper body posture, the surrendering movements of his hips, the angle of his boots resting in his stirrups, starts to pay off. With the weight off her trembling knees, the bouncing ride gradually becomes, if not exactly comfortable, at least somewhat less jarring.
Breathing in the crisp morning air, heavy with the rain-freshened scent of wet earth, decomposing leaves, and dry pine needles, she finds herself relaxing into a swaying rhythm with her saddle. As the horses weave expertly through the heavy terrain, Julie concentrates on the back of Virgil’s head. She finds herself staring at the only part of his body that is not covered, the area between the bottom of his cowboy hat and the collar of his canvas jacket. As if aware of her scrutiny, Virgil reins the black gelding to an abrupt stop. Lifting a heavy fir branch that blocks the path, he pulls it back, sidesteps his horse to the edge of the path, and ushers Julie by. Once she is through, he spurs the gelding on up the bank then down again to retake the lead.
As he does so a cow bawls somewhere in the bush above. Virgil’s dog bolts up the mountainside and his horse swings around in one swift movement to strain forward in an uphill trot. Without warning Julie’s mare follows suit, and she can do no more than grip the saddle horn with both hands to keep from sliding off. Just when she is certain she can’t hold on a moment longer, the dog flushes out a heifer and young steer from the thicket. Using the coiled lariat to usher them along, Virgil drives them through a clump of low-lying juniper and back onto the trail.
After what seems like hours, they break out onto an alpine clearing where a group of Hereford cows, some lying in the sun, others grazing, turn their massive white heads to greet them.
Before long, twenty range cattle are bunched up in front of Virgil’s horse for the trek back down to the valley. Brushing the rumps of the ones who fall behind with his lariat, he keeps the herd moving forward, while his dog nips at the heels of any strays.
The procession winds steadily downhill. Soreness creeping into muscles she has never given thought to, Julie is reluctant to spur the mare into a trot, so she allows the gap between them and Virgil to increase but never so far that she cannot see the tail end of his horse. She recognizes nothing in the landscape and is certain this is not the route they took on the way up. Left on her own, she doubts if she could find her way home.
Typical of Chilcotin extremes the temperature rises with the late morning sun. Beneath layers of clothing, sweat trickles down Julie’s spine, and between her breasts. Virgil removes his canvas jacket, rolls it up and attaches it to his saddle. Julie juggles the reins from one hand to the other and struggles out of her own outer jacket. Tying it down while on the move proves a little more difficult. She locates the leather toggles and then, confident the mare will continue to follow Virgil’s horse, she wraps the reins around the saddle horn. She quickly lays her scrunched-up jacket across the front of the saddle, and fumbles with the ties on one side.
Without warning, the mare dances sideways, her ears lying flat, her nostrils snorting. Thrown off balance, Julie’s left foot slips out of the stirrup and she grabs for the saddle horn. The panicked mare throws her head downward, her arching neck tugging at the reins, which unravel and snake to the ground. Lunging forward to grab them just as the horse rears up on her hind legs, Julie slides, rather than falls, from the back of the saddle and across the mare’s rump. She hits the ground with a thud, the wind knocked out of her, as the horse bolts away. Too numb to know if there is anything hurting, besides her already aching muscles, not to mention her pride, Julie slowly pushes herself up.
And as she does she catches a glimpse of a dark form moving in the forest above. Scrambling to her feet she screams, “Bear!” and runs toward Virgil, who is trotting back on the trail.
He reins his horse in beside Julie. “A bear,” she says breathlessly, pointing up the hill. “Did you see it?”
Beneath his cowboy hat Virgil’s forehead knits together, as he scans the hillside. But there is nothing to see except the dappled sunlight streaming through the trees. Had she imagined the hulking beast? Without confirming or denying the bear sighting, Virgil shifts in his saddle. Leaning over he offers her his arm. Without hesitation, as if she has done this every day of her life, she reaches up and grasps his forearm, and in one quick movement is pulled up onto the back of the horse.
Feeling awkward and not knowing what to hang onto, she grabs the back rim of the saddle. But when the gelding suddenly begins to move, Julie jerks forward, and with a will of their own her arms wrap around Virgil’s waist. They remain there even after they catch up to the herd.
As they make their slow descent she is forced closer. Her cheek presses against his flannel shirt, and she breathes in his musky scent of sweat and a spicy soap she cannot identify. Even through his clothing she is aware of his body warmth, and the tight muscles of his abdomen working with every movement. She feels herself blush at the intimacy of her thighs pressed against his hips and is glad he cannot see her face.
By the time they reach the valley floor she has relaxed into the rhythm of Virgil’s body swaying with the animal beneath them. Once they drive the cows into the south field, they leave the herd and head down the field toward home. Over Virgil’s shoulder, Julie spots the bay mare—her jacket dangling loose from the saddle—standing by the corral fence. Holding her reins and watching them approach is Ian.
Julie is uncertain if the clouded look of concern on his face is due to the fact that her horse has arrived home without her, or because she has just now thought to remove her arms from around Virgil’s waist.
33
Sometimes in the brief space between sleeping and waking my mother thinks she feels my presence. She’s right. I’m there, trying to find a way into her dreams. For a fleeting moment she almost grasps my message but there is never enough time in that in-between place.
Mr Emerson says that I am taking a risk. At least I think it’s Mr Emerson. It’s getting more and more difficult to tell where these thoughts come from. ‘Thoughts’ is probably the wrong word. It is more like knowing a truth, and I’m not certain if this ‘knowing’ is my own, Mr Emerson’s, or even, as I am beginning to suspect, coming from some larger consciousness. God? I don’t know. I’m still working on that.
Anyway there will be no such ephemeral—now there’s a cool word, definitely Mr Emerson�
�s influence—moment for Mom this morning. Even in her sleep her all too human body grounds her to reality. She rolls over gingerly, waking slowly, with every sore muscle and stiff joint reminding her that she is a forty-four-year-old woman who spent four hours on a horse yesterday. Even her fingers ache. There wasn’t a chance that she would sense me trying, once again, to fill her dreams with his face, his name. Levi.
I just want her to talk to him. The first anniversary of my death is almost here. Mom’s trying to pretend it isn’t coming by filling her mind with distractions. Levi is planning to do a ‘sweat,’ a vision quest, on that day, and this morning he started to fast in preparation. It’s dangerous enough to attempt to enter what he calls ‘the spirit world’ but his body is not as strong as it used to be, and I am afraid for him.
He wouldn’t have to do this if Mom had only answered his calls; if she would only agree to meet with him, hear what he needs to say. There was a time when she would have been more than happy to, a time when, of all my friends, Levi was one of her favourites.
He was Kajul’s friend first. Well, not hers exactly, but her older brother, Kuldeep’s. Levi moved into the school dorms in town when he was in grade seven. Kuldeep Sandhu was a hockey jock as well, the only Indo-Canadian player on the team. Levi was the only First Nations. Maybe because of that, or because they were both quiet and not the party-hardy type, the two ended up hanging together. Mom was always saying how fortunate we were to live in such a racially diverse town. But if she could have seen our school cafeteria at lunch hour she might have had a different view. Every clique and ethnic division was obvious by where you sat. Kuldeep and Levi avoided it. They usually walked over to the Sandhus’ house for lunch. Because it was so close to the school, Kajul and I often did, too. Of course neither Levi nor Kuldeep paid much attention to us girls then. Still we went to every one of their hockey games to cheer them on. Then, when Kajul’s brother went to live with his uncle at the coast so he could play for the Surrey Juniors, Levi just fell into hanging with us whenever he wasn’t practising or playing hockey. It was neat. Kajul and I both had a bit of a crush on him from the start. I was secretly glad though when she said she could never act on it, because, no matter how progressive her parents were, there wasn’t a chance they would ever understand anything more than a friendship between her and Levi. East is east and west is west and all that old stuff.
Mom once said that Levi, with his quiet handsomeness and unassuming ways, was going to grow up to be the kind of man that everyone fell a little bit in love with. When I was in grade nine, even though he was a grade ahead of me, we both ended up in Mr Emerson’s English literature class. I think I fell more than a ‘little bit’ in love with him the day we had to read out loud our first class assignment, which was to write a short story in the form of a myth or legend. Of course we all expected that he would write about some fictional hockey player.
Although he was something of a legend himself, at least with the hockey fans, when he stood at the front of the class, he appeared neither proud nor, like many of us, nervous. Without looking up from his paper he introduced his story, “The Legend of Crow.” I had to lean forward to hear his slow, but unfaltering, words.
“In the beginning,” he read, “Crow was a wise and magical bird with pearl white feathers and a beautiful singing voice. Crow was friend to all of the other birds. They would gather in the trees to hear him sing and to listen to his words of wisdom. The lonely Eagle, also a friend of Crow’s, became jealous of all the adulation being heaped upon Crow. But Crow was so enjoying all the attention of those gathered around him, he forgot to watch for signs of danger. And so Crow did not see the resentment growing in the eyes of his old friend Eagle.
“One day, as the birds of the world met once again to hear Crow’s wondrous voice, Eagle watched from high above. Enraged, he flew up to the Sun and stole a glowing ember of fire. Then he flew back to the forest with the ember held tightly in his talons, intending to set fire to the very trees on whose branches the admirers of Crow sat perched. Above the forest Eagle let the ember drop. As the fire fell from the sky, the frightened birds scattered in panic. Only Crow flew toward the glow. Since Crow had no strong talons with which to carry the burning ember, he caught it in his beak. As he flew away from the earth, the black smoke streamed across his feathers and the heat scorched his throat. Still, Crow flew on and on, to the other side of darkness. By the time the fire had gone out, he had reached the Spirit World. There, Crow was honoured as a brave and loyal bird. Since he was the first bird to find the path to the Spirit World, he was allowed to return to earth, where, with his forever blackened feathers and raspy voice, Crow became the messenger between the two worlds.”
It was the most words I had ever heard, or ever would hear, Levi say all in one go. He ended his story by telling the class that the crow was his spirit guide, and showed us the carved pendant he wore around his neck. Then he added with a shy smile, that his mother often teased him when he was a child that the crow was his spirit guide, because, just like the bird, he couldn’t sing. He never shared the essay he wrote for the class assignment with her. Neither she, nor the Elders, would have been too impressed with him messing with ancient legends.
Remembering his story, I think he takes this spirit guide thing way too seriously now. But, hey, what do I know? I’m just a dead white girl.
34
Hanging onto the railing and wincing with each measured step, Julie makes her way downstairs in the glare of the late morning sun.
“Virgil’s long gone if you were thinking of going to round up cows with him again,” Ian calls from the living room. Throwing a log onto the fire he pushes it into place with the poker, shuts the fireplace door then straightens up and brushes his hands together. “Uh oh,” he says watching her take the last few steps. “Saddle-sore?”
She grimaces. Saddle-sore is too mild a term for the way her body aches. “More like I’ve been trampled by a herd of horses, rather than just jostled around on one.”
“Bet you wish you had a little extra padding on your behind now.”
Ian’s comment is the first time he has made any sort of reference to her weight loss. The skin rubbed raw to the bone in the most inconvenient place is testament to the truth of his observation.
“Very funny,” she says heading into the kitchen. “The only thing I’m wishing for right now is a cup of coffee.”
“It’s made,” he says, following her. “So did you at least enjoy…”
His words are interrupted by a sudden commotion outside. They both turn to the sound of the dog’s frantic barking, and the cause of his concern, the increasing roar of an approaching ATV.
“Another bloody quad,” Ian snarls and heads into the mudroom.
Julie groans. Only last week one of these obnoxious-sounding all-terrain vehicles had appeared on the west side of the back field. Ian had stormed out of his office and across the front lawn, arms waving. Although Julie hadn’t heard what was said when he met the trespassing hunter at the head of the creek, she did see the vehicle spin around, black mud spitting up from beneath the balloon tires and splattering Ian, before it roared away.
Intent on intervening in an altercation with another hunter this morning, she rushes after him as quickly as her punished muscles will allow.
Pulling on his boots in the mudroom he mutters, “Jesus. They just roar across our land as if they own it.” Without lacing up his boots he throws the door open and bolts out. Julie follows in her stocking feet.
Out on the road an excited Pup is running alongside the approaching ATV, yipping and leaping at the driver.
“It’s all right,” Julie yells over the engine noise. “It’s Terri.”
The vehicle pulls up, the knocking engine throttling to a shaking stop. The sudden silence fills the late morning air like relief.
Wearing a heavy camouflage jacket, which matches her vehicle—and makes her appear even more imposing than Julie remembers—Terri-the-Pilot leans back and g
rins at them. “Hello, girlfriend,” she calls out, pulling the black watch cap off her head and wiping her brow with the back of her hand.
Still in her stocking feet, Julie smiles at her from the bottom step. “Hello there yourself,” she says, surprised by how glad she is to see this woman again.
Terri climbs out of the four-wheeler and kneels down to greet the dog. “Just thought I’d stop by and see how you’re making out with the pup.” She nuzzles her face into his neck. “And I see just fine. Eh, fella?”
Taking in the gun attached to a rack behind the seat, Julie asks, “Out hunting?”
“Nah, not really,” Terri says scratching behind Pup’s ears. “Picked up a few grouse on my way over. That shotgun’s mostly to warn any bears or hunters that I’m in the area—not that this noisy contraption ain’t enough.” Standing up she strides forward wiping her huge hand on her jeans before offering it to Ian. “Terri Champion,” she says, as he grasps it.
