by Jan Redford
Ten minutes out of town the highway straightened and the Columbia River widened into the Wetlands. Acres and acres of marsh that attracted almost two hundred species of birds—and billions of mosquitoes. We turned up a dirt road and rattled up the freshly graded hill in second gear.
Past an intersection, we turned off into a laneway that ran through some woods. We followed two tire tracks with tall grass down the centre toward a house sitting on the highest point of land in a clearing. The backdrop of mountains grew and grew, filling our view as the Subaru groaned up the steep, potholed dirt, past rows of raised garden beds and raspberry bushes, a woodshed and chopping block, a small greenhouse. We pulled up on a gravel parking spot, Grant turned off the engine, and we took it all in: the cedar salt-box house on cement Sonotubes—like little stilts—the steep red metal roof, the 360-degree view of three mountain ranges: the Rockies, the Purcells and the Selkirks. There was a miniature version of the main house that the owners had lived in while they were building.
“Oh my God,” I said, letting my breath out with a sigh.
This was my dream home. I wanted to skip though the chest-high grass, spin around and sing the theme from The Sound of Music. University and the city seemed very far away.
“Look.” Grant pointed. “There’s a shitter.”
An outhouse squatted below the house, facing the mountains.
While Grant pulled Jenna out of her car seat, I wandered up a path lined with bright orange lilies and blood-red poppies covered in ants. I climbed weathered cedar steps to a deck and stared down into the valley at a bright, meandering thread of silver, the Blaeberry River.
Grant tried the front door. It was locked. We’d have to wait till Barney got here to see inside. Grant and Jenna peeked through the window.
“Look, Jenna, this is our new home.” He was better at creative visualization than I was and he hadn’t even done the workbook.
Jenna was so tiny in Grant’s arms. She was almost two and I’d been with her almost every second since she was born except to occasionally climb, bike or ski. If I went to university, I’d have to put her in daycare. Someone else would take care of her. She’d be in the city, away from the mountains, away from her father.
During my last counselling session I’d told Rhea how safe I felt with Grant. How if there were a major disaster and we had to escape into the mountains, I knew he could protect us. She’d said that in this day and age there were more important characteristics in a husband and father than being able to protect a family from disasters. How many disasters came along in a lifetime? But that wasn’t the point. The point was I knew he’d die for us, even if he wasn’t all touchy-feely about it.
Jenna’s hands were splayed on the window, her nose pressed against the glass. Her blond hair shone white in the sun. When she pulled her face back, laughing, she left two tiny handprints and a smudge from her breath on the window. Marking her territory.
As I watched Grant heft her onto his shoulders, I realized, I do want to have another baby with this man. He’s my home.
24
YOU LEAD, I’LL FOLLOW
I lay naked on top of the comforter, palpating my breasts and watching the pink glow on Redman Peak through the northeast-facing window of our new bedroom. Grant, lying beside me with his hands laced behind his head, glanced over at my chest.
“What are you doing?”
“My boobs are getting bigger, don’t you think?”
He looked back up at the ceiling. He was still here only because I’d told him I hated it when he jumped out of bed after sex. I could almost hear the calculations in his head, as he wondered if enough time had passed.
“They hurt. I wonder if I’m already pregnant?”
“Maybe you’re poking at them too much.” His eyes crinkled with his slight smile. His face was scabbed from above his eye, over his cheekbone to under his chin. A log had rolled over him the week before at work, leaving a path of ripped skin. He’d been lucky. It could have been a lot worse.
We lay still, listening to the silence. It was so quiet this far from town. No more semis blasting or idling for hours at the bottom of the hill outside Humpty’s restaurant. No more trains banging in the switching yard. Now all I heard was that hum that was always in my ears, the absence of noise.
“Guess how long it’s going to take me to get my degree by distance taking two courses a year?”
He didn’t answer.
“Nineteen years.”
“So, take more courses.”
That was impossible with Jenna. She used to go to daycare two mornings a week but I’d cancelled to save money. We were barely getting from paycheque to paycheque with the mortgage. I tried to squeeze in my studies after she fell asleep and before I nodded off myself.
“I’ve been wondering if we should have another baby right now. I feel like a climber with a kid, but with two, I’m going to turn into a dumpy housewife, a real mother.”
“You’re already a real mother.”
If I’d gotten pregnant right away, I wouldn’t have had all this time to think, but we’d been trying for two months. Enough time to change my mind.
“It’s going to suck to be fat again. I’m the perfect weight for climbing.”
“You won’t be fat, you’ll be pregnant.”
Good answer. I turned toward him to snuggle into his side but he was sitting up, reaching for his underwear. The Crummy would be here soon.
He shoved his feet into his socks with his back to me. He was getting tired of my waffling, but when my period arrived he looked suspiciously relieved.
He was moving stiffly. His ribs were in worse shape than his face. Nothing broken, but his chest was a mass of purple and green and red, fading now after a week or so. I put my fingers lightly on a bruise.
“How’s your body?
“I’ll survive.”
With Grant climbing mountains and felling trees, the most dangerous job in Canada, I never knew what to expect when the phone rang. Not long ago a logger he worked with died in the bush, and another died in a collision on the drive home. Maybe this contributed to my waffling about a baby. Being a widow with a toddler was rosier than a pregnant widow with a toddler.
I burrowed back under the covers to sleep until Jenna woke up.
* * *
—
“Come on, Jenna, let’s go for a bike ride!”
“Just a minute. I busy.”
Jenna was trying to squeeze Gus, her new kitten, into a pink lacy doll dress. His grey body hung limp with defeat between her knees, like a dead rabbit’s. A little mewl escaped his mouth.
When I moved toward her, she reassured me quickly, “I be gentle, I be gentle.”
Grant had been gone a couple of hours. The dishes were done, the laundry was folded, the toys were picked up, the play-dough scraped off the walls and floors, and the kitchen linoleum was lit up like gold where the sun streamed through the front door.
I finally coaxed Jenna outside, clutching her ratty old “special blanket.” She wouldn’t leave the house, wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t do anything without it. I strapped her facing backwards into the black, missile-shaped bike trailer we’d picked up in Calgary out of the Buy and Sell—my freedom machine—straddled my bike and headed down the driveway. Jenna let out a long moan so she could listen to her voice jiggle and bump with each pothole as we zoomed through the thick scent of cedar, pine and freshly cut grass. There was lots of room for a baby brother or sister in the trailer. It’d be heavier for sure. But it would keep me in shape.
A heavier bike carrier. There was another pro for my Pros and Cons of Having a Baby list. I had nine cons: no freedom, more housework, no time to ski or study, work postponed for three more years, school put off forever, expensive, fat and out of shape, alone with two kids instead of one, labour. I had two pros: companion for Jenna, never have to do it again.
In my lowest gear, I turned onto the road. Burl was in his tractor beside their house, a big split-level right
beside the road. I waved and he gave me a big grin and waved back. The first time we’d gone over to their house to introduce ourselves no one answered the door, so we walked around to the back to see Burl with a newly killed deer dangling by the legs, blood pouring from its neck into a bucket. But he’d been all warm and friendly, and welcomed us to the neighbourhood. He was going to plough our driveway during the winter and his wife, Anne, had offered to babysit.
I stood up on my pedals and pumped my legs. This steep hill went on for a few miles. Boot camp.
After only half an hour on the back roads, Jenna’s happy chatter turned to whining, which I knew would downgrade to screaming in no time, so I turned around before we got to our destination, the Blaeberry River, and cycled home. As I approached the house, I heard music coming from the shop. Grant was not supposed to be back until Friday, but there was his gear—his chainsaw, oil-soaked backpack, hard hat, toolbox, axe and red gas jug—all piled on the lawn. He usually stashed his chainsaw and gas jugs at his last tree so he wouldn’t have to haul them all the way up the steep slash the next day.
Jenna and I pushed open the heavy door to the “little house,” as we’d dubbed the workshop—the miniature version of the big house. A blend of cigarette smoke, cedar, gas and oil rushed to greet us; Bruce Springsteen crooned on the ghetto-blaster. Grant looked up from sharpening his chainsaw, grinning through cigarette smoke.
“Yarder broke down.” He grabbed Jenna, plopped her on a chair and continued his sharpening.
“Shit. How long?” We needed a new car to replace the rusted-out Subaru, there was the mortgage, and we were supposed to be working on a new baby.
“Won’t be that long, and I’m totally fried. I need a break. Look at the weather.” He waved his arm toward the window to take in the cloudless blue sky, the Purcell and Selkirk mountains with only a light dusting of snow at the end of September.
Grant had done some interior decorating to the shop. He’d hung a big-boob Husqvarna-chainsaw calendar above the desk and an old painting on the opposite wall—a faded acrylic of Banff’s Mount Norquay. Centre stage was a Stoney Nation chief in full headdress on a chairlift. The last time I’d seen that painting was on the wall of his grungy basement room in Banff when we first got together. His last bachelor pad. He’d told me once that it reminded him of his old life.
“Barry called. He wants to go climb Mount Alberta.”
A sharp intake of breath. My arms crossed my chest. Mount Alberta had been climbed only a few times, and it was a several-day commitment. The kind of mountain you couldn’t afford to fall on.
“I’ve got to climb, Jan.”
I stared at the calendar, my hackles rising. I wanted to ask him what big boobs had to do with chainsaws but I couldn’t afford to be a feminist right now. I was either ovulating or pregnant. And I knew it wasn’t about the big boobs. It was the climbing. If he climbed more, he’d work less, or die, and any wage I brought in wouldn’t even cover the mortgage.
“Let’s go climbing tomorrow—just cragging at Lake Louise or something. It’ll be good for us. Anne can babysit.”
I nodded, my prickliness dropping away. I’d barely climbed this summer. I could use a day feeling like a climber instead of a mom.
* * *
—
Grant navigated the hairpin turns while I stared out my window at the thousand-foot drop into Kicking Horse Canyon. I tried not to think of the car rolling down the embankment and landing upside down in the river I used to paddle with Brad. I turned my focus to our destination—Lake Louise. This would be our first day of climbing together in weeks.
“You really think Jenna’s safe with Anne?”
Grant took his eyes off the road long enough to glance at me and nod. “Jenna will be fine.”
“She seemed too keen to babysit. Didn’t she seem pretty keen?”
When my fears came in contact with air, they started to multiply. Anne had tried for years to get pregnant and had finally adopted two little boys. Brothers. Maybe she wanted a little girl to complete the picture.
Grant glanced at me. “You need an off button for your mind.”
* * *
—
Grant climbed easily, his movements smooth and fluid, placing protection as he went, but not nearly as much as I would have placed.
“Shouldn’t you put a piece in there?”
He looked down at me, flashed a tolerant smile. His eyes looked glacial blue against his rough, tanned skin. We’d always been drawn to each other’s eyes.
He was the kind of guy who could get up off the couch and do hard leads without a warm-up climb. Without climbing for weeks. Nerves of steel.
As he climbed, I fed out the rope, then realized I was swaying back and forth as though there were a baby on my hip. I forced myself to stand still.
As Grant approached the crux, I widened my stance and kept a close eye on him. He grunted under a steep overhang, pulled himself up and over and rested for a moment on a big foothold, shaking out his arms. A few minutes later, he was at the anchor, looking over the treetops at the emerald green water of Lake Louise and yodelling. No need for an exorcist to get rid of the surly logger. He just needed to go climbing.
Once Grant had me on belay, I climbed toward him, my forearms getting pumped with exertion. The holds were big but the rock was steep, overhanging. I used to want to lead this route, but never tried.
I crouched in a little ball under the overhang, shook out my arms, then chalked up and felt around blindly for a hold around the corner. It was just out of reach. The rope tightened as Grant pulled up the slack. When I looked down fifty feet to the ground, I got a flash of my body, bloody and mangled on the rocks below, even though I knew I was safe on a top rope.
Focused on the huge chalk-covered handhold I was aiming for, I moved out on the face. The hold was still out of reach of my white, groping fingers. I looked down again. I didn’t remember this move being so hard. I was just about to yell up at Grant to tighten the rope while I made the move (in other words, hoist me up a bit), but then noticed he was staring out at the water, smoking a cigarette. He wasn’t even looking. A PMS-like irritation injected me with energy and I pushed off on my foot, lunged for the hold. My whole hand clamped down and my feet lost contact with the rock momentarily till I matched my other hand on the hold and got my feet firmly back on the rock. I did a mantel move, which thrust me up onto the small ledge below the anchor.
“Nice going!” Grant said.
I looked up. He’d been watching.
* * *
—
Back on the ground, Grant coiled the rope while I sorted the gear.
“I could get logging out of my system with a few more days like this,” he said. “I’m coming alive again.” The tension lines and frown etched in his face were softening. “Hey, you should lead a pitch.”
“No, not today.” The thought of leading even one foot away from my protection made me feel ill.
“Come on, you’re climbing great. You’ve gotta get back on the sharp end. Just do one of the routes we did with the cadets.”
Anxiety, like heat, spread up my neck. “No, I’m not in the right headspace.” The last time I’d led had been at Tunnel Mountain near Banff with Jeannette, on a route so easy I should have been able to do it without a rope. I’d taken so long on it Jeannette had finally said, “Jesus, would you just climb?” I couldn’t even keep my shit together with women anymore.
“You’re a way more graceful climber than me. You should be pushing it.” That was what Dan used to say. It hadn’t helped much then, and it wouldn’t help now.
“No! I’m fine following.”
I have a two-year-old daughter now. I’m a mother. What if I don’t come home?
“Okay, okay. But you’d feel way better if you did.”
He avoided my glare and put extra-special attention into coiling the rope.
* * *
—
The red light was flashing on the answering machi
ne when we got home.
“Good news, Grant.” It was Dale, his boss. “Yarder’s good as new. I’ll need you back at work tomorrow morning. Got a big block to open up. I’ll pick you up at the regular time.” A dial tone replaced his voice.
Grant’s shoulders slumped. “Well, that’s that.” He pushed a button to erase the message.
25
CARSICK
The faded blue ’67 Buick Skylark station wagon looked like it hadn’t moved in twenty years. The hood was buried under heavy, wet snow. Grant and I stared at the fins on the back end while Jenna did calisthenics off my body, stretching her hands over her head like I was her diving board and she was about to do a back flip. We were standing in inches of mud and slush and she had insisted on wearing her black shiny party shoes, so I tightened my grip, but stumbled backwards and almost tripped over Chaba. Three months ago, just before Christmas, Jenna had picked the tiny, pug-nosed golden Lab out of his litter of siblings because he was the runt. She was drawn to the underdog.
“Looks pretty good to me,” Grant said to his friend Ted, and rubbed his hands together like the Grinch. Ted and Diane hadn’t used the car in years. They’d told us if we could get it out of the snowbank, it was ours. Grant liked free stuff.
Our Subaru was sitting at Petro-Can where the mechanic was waiting for the okay to haul it off to the wreckers. I’d been going a little too fast down the driveway in my haste to get to the ski hill and had broken the suspension. But maybe it was a blessing in disguise. We were long overdue for a new car. I’d seen the Subaru up on the hoist. The underside was completely coated with a layer of orange rot.
But a ’67 Buick Skylark, manufactured when I was six years old, was not exactly what I’d had in mind as a replacement.
Ted shivered in his wheelchair, almost disappearing into his heavy down parka. A year earlier he’d been felling a skinny lodgepole pine when a branch dropped the whole height of the tree and landed on his neck. He spent his thirtieth birthday at the Calgary Foothills Hospital. After our first few visits, Grant had stopped going—Ted was too much of a reminder of what could happen to him—but now he was back to doing odd jobs for them and keeping Ted company. They went too far back for him to stay away. Ted and Grant had climbed together in their twenties, then both got into logging, so Ted was one of the few who could understand how Grant could kill trees and still love the mountains.
