“What’s wrong with Papa?” she asked.
“Well, he emptied that whisky bottle for one,” Adeline said.
“He’s got a broken leg,” I told her.
Adeline pulled off the blanket to see the brace the nuns had put on Adolphus’s leg.
“All right, let’s bring him in.”
Adeline collected a couple of tent poles from the house. Catherine grabbed a blanket from the wagon box. They threw together a stretcher and we all three manoeuvred Adolphus onto it and into the house. Seeing him cared for like that, I thought how lucky he was to have a family like that. No wonder he wouldn’t let the nuns keep him overnight. He wanted to get home to these women who loved him. Catherine and her mother worked together like veterans, sharing few words and getting everything done. Adolphus didn’t come to in the whole trip to his bed.
“There, let him rest now for a couple of weeks maybe. That’s a long time for Adolphus to hold still,” Adeline said after they were finished.
“They told him at the mission to stay off it for a month at least.”
Adeline just laughed.
I had thought about staying around and helping out so Adolphus could rest easier. But then again, things were well looked after as it stood, and neither Adolphus nor me had been here for weeks. I wanted a reason to stay but couldn’t think of one, so I went out to take the team back to Bertrand. It would be dark soon but the horses knew the way. I figured I could camp at Bertrand’s and head out to Prudens’ ranch in the morning.
Adeline caught me heading out. “You stay here tonight,” she said. “Bertrand’s got lots of horses. He doesn’t need to see them tonight. You can take them back in the morning. You have something to eat and rest up.”
Adeline went to the stove as Catherine went into the sleeping room and came back with some blankets. She began fixing me a bed on the floor on the far side of the room.
“Was he drinking when he got hurt?” Adeline asked me.
“No, working,” I said. I told them what had happened while they fixed the table with moose stew and bannock. Adeline caught me up on all the news. I can’t remember everything we talked about. That was around the time that my cousin George took over grandpas homestead and started farming. He did that for a year before he was back to building boats. And the train was running passengers in by then, it was the start of harder times. There were so many white people around; it was tough for a Métis to get a job. “White people stick together,” I had told them.
“Maybe it’s because they have more schooling,” Catherine said.
“Then they would be hiring the Treaties if that was it,” said Adeline. “A lot of Treaties have schooling. It’s true; they stick to themselves if they can. Before, they used to make sure they were our friends. They needed us. They didn’t know their way around the bush like us. Remember those pitiful people that came and settled just west of us here by the river? They could farm all right, but they weren’t that good at hunting. They were so happy when we would drop some meat off for them every once in a while. I guess they were getting tired of fish.”
“Maybe it’s good there are so many white people here,” said Catherine. “They built a school now.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Adeline. “Most of them still think we’re too stupid to learn. They still act like they’re better than us.”
“Not when they need us,” Catherine said. “They don’t think we’re too stupid when they’re sick or having a baby, eh? Remember when Mr. Lafontaine came pounding on our door in the middle of the night?”
“That poor woman, I had to reach in for that baby. Now that little boy is always hanging around with George’s boys. He thinks he’s Métis. He talks Cree pretty good too, eh?”
By now the table was cleared. Catherine poured tea for us and picked up the moccasins she was working on. I could see that she did beautiful, tight beadwork. She could get a good dollar for that. Catherine was so attentive to whatever she was doing, so skilled. And she had the kindness of her mother and her father. I couldn’t stop watching her.
“Do you have the medicine you need to make sure Papa heals in a strong way, Momma?”
“Yes. Remember the plants I had you dig when we were out picking blueberries the last time? Those are the ones we will use tomorrow.”
“You said they were for blood.”
“For bones too.”
I figured I could head out in the morning, but I still didn’t want to. When I woke up the next morning, Catherine was already building the fire in the cookstove. Adolphus and Adeline were already awake; I could hear them talking in the next room. It was a little embarrassing—I should have been the first one up and building the fire. I put my boots on and joined Catherine. She just smiled at me and handed me the water pail without saying a word.
Later that morning I paid Adolphus a visit. He looked like he had been doing some thinking.
“How you doing, partner?” I asked him.
“It looks like I’m tied up to the post here for a while. It’s a bad time of year to be held up.”
“I’m not in any rush to get out to Prudens’,” I told him. “I was thinking of coming back to see how my cousin George is making out. Adeline was telling me he might be having a hard time. Is there anything you need me to bring back for you from town?”
They needed a few supplies since we hadn’t stopped to pick any up. Adolphus was in too much pain to think about it at the time. Catherine offered to follow me. We hitched up the teams. Having her behind me, driving the team, it felt like we were already together. Even then I felt like we belonged to each other. She was sweet to watch, so shy in town. I felt like I should protect her. I felt then that I had to have that woman in my life. When we got back, that’s what I told Adolphus.
“You will have to show me how you are going to look after her,” he said. “You have no house. You have no horse. You have no boat. You have nothing.”
I told him, “I can work. I have never had anybody I cared about. I want to be with her. I want to take care of her. I want to see that no harm comes to her.”
“I believe you,” he told me, taking hold of my arm and looking up at me. “But you’ll have to show me.”
So I started to work. It was easy when you could see why you were doing it, and with each day I got to know Catherine, the surer I was. Adeline told me, “She has a gift. The Spirits love her well. She helps me with my medicines. She has dreams. Sometimes that’s not easy to live with. You might want to run away.” Catherine said, “I know you belong to me. You will think it through.” I would go through each day thinking about how I could show them that I was the man I needed to be.
Catherine and I looked after the trapline until Adolphus was back on his feet, then it was he and I that worked it. It was the start of more rough times. White trappers were moving into the country in bigger numbers than there had ever been. They would poach our traps, fix their own with poisons. Adolphus was angry and disgusted. He couldn’t just give up trapping, because it was the way he had always supported his family through the winter, but by the end of the season he was planning on moving further north to get away from them.
By then I had developed a plan. I had helped my cousin George build a few skiffs, enough to earn my own, and went to Adolphus with my idea. We went into business. We would trade up and down the river from our skiff. Adolphus knew furs and I knew the water. We would trade goods for furs and dried fish. We bought and sold with trappers, farmers, and ranchers all along the river. We did a good business. I earned my way into the family. Catherine and I were married that December.
We were so happy. I had never been so content. I was a new man. Jean Francis was born in October of the following year. We continued to do good business on the river. Soon Catherine and Adeline were travelling and trading with us as well.
When Jean Francis was two we had a hard time when Catherine miscarried. Adeline was the strength for us. She had been through this before. You never forget it, b
ut we moved on. Two years later we had Daniel. This time all went well, we thought. We had taken such good care of Catherine to be sure the baby had the best chance. But when he was about ten months old Catherine began to feel weak. She and Adeline stayed home with the children that summer. By the time Adolphus and I came back from our trading trip, Catherine was bedridden, coughing, pale and weak. She had consumption. Nothing Adeline could do was helping. That’s when I saw Flora again. She was now a nun and had come to help with Catherine full-time.
I was stunned and in shock. I was numb. I didn’t know what to think. How was this possible? Adeline had medicine. Flora had another medicine, and Catherine was so strong. She didn’t want to leave us. She had her family to live for. We told ourselves she would make it.
That last night I had fallen asleep on a chair with my head on her bed. I awoke at the feel of her fingers stroking my head. I looked at her. Her eyes were filled with the deepest sadness I had ever seen. Tears were flowing down her face.
“Francis, I heard my owl,” she told me.
“When? I didn’t hear anything.”
“Last night. Everybody was sleeping. No one heard but me. It was for me.”
I felt a fear, and then a panic. She’s going. She’s leaving us. I fell beside her and held her and held her. We cried together.
“I can’t go on without you,” I said.
“You have to, for the boys. They will need you more than ever.”
“I can’t think about that right now. How can I be any good to them without you? I’m no good without you.”
“Don’t say that. You’re good.”
“I was no good until I met you. Ask your papa.”
“He was just making sure you were good for me,” she said as she touched my face and ran her fingers through my hair.
“I will be gone but I will never leave you. I will be here always to help you raise our babies. Remember that and believe it. I know. I see them all waiting for me on the other side,” she said.
Once her owl had come she wasn’t fighting any more.
I was crazy in my grief. I was living in a world that was here and not here. When we laid her in the ground I was broken. I was in so much pain. I couldn’t bear it. I was broken and empty once again. I was no good. I was lost in my own insane world.
I was no good to my children like this. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I was in rage, agony, and sorrow, and in devastated hopelessness. I couldn’t seem to come back. I didn’t want to come back. I wanted to die along with her.
Adeline tried to comfort me even in her grief. “She’s not in pain any more, Francis. Remember how she suffered. Take some comfort in knowing she is well now.”
I couldn’t hear that. I blamed myself. I’m sure she picked up the sickness on one of our trading trips. I raged at the greedy, selfish, ugly white man who was taking our land and our jobs, and who would rather see us dead. Adolphus tried to stop me from going to that place in my heart. “If you hate, it will kill you. Think of your children. They miss their mother too and they need their dad.”
I was poison. I had to take myself away from those I loved. I heard the train whistle blow. “Theres my owl,” I said to myself. I threw myself into an open boxcar. “Take me. Take me, I don’t care where.”
“So tell me. Where did you go when you went to wandering around?”
Adolphus looked up from over the top of his mug, leaned back onto the side of the shed. “Must be some stories come from when a man travels like that.”
“Well, I was travelling with Louis for a while there. He was sitting in the shadows in the boxcar I jumped into, with his big jug of moonshine!”
“That’s right. We heard he was gone about the same time you were. Crazy right from when he was a boy.”
“He told me his woman threw him out after that white man who was boss of the survey crew fired him.”
“Yeah, I remember. The boss wanted to bring in his brother-in-law. Not a lot of folks from around here still working for that team,” Adolphus said. “They all came from somewhere else.”
“Louis told me that it was because he lost his gun at Sylvester’s poker game.”
Adolphus laughed. “That’s probably true.”
“We made plans to work for some ranchers around Edmonton and take it from there. For a while we were thinking of maybe finding a train going to Winnipeg and go back to the old country—Rupert’s Land, Louis called it. He said he was named for Riel but he hasn’t been able to find his army.”
“His uncle was in Riel’s army in 1869, you know. They came up here the same time as Laurent Garneau.”
“I remember him telling that to me. I asked him, ‘Don’t you know the war is over?’ and he says, ‘Well, in the name of dog tail soup! I guess I should be recovering my casualties.’ I told him he’s crazy. He said, ‘I’m a man of vision. There are two of you in front of me right now.’”
“I think you were spending too much time with him.”
“We had some wild times. We fell off the train just outside Dunvegan and slept the night in the bushes. Back then it was around harvest, so there was plenty of work. Don’t have much to show for it, though, but it was pretty easy living. We even had the opportunity for a few scrimmages from time to time.”
“So what happened to him then? Did he come back with you?”
“No. Well, we split up when I got a ranching job and Louis went off with a threshing crew. We would meet up at the bar but it wasn’t long before he disappeared for a while. And that was hard. I don’t need to tell you, I had a lot of pain, and it started coming back then.”
“I knew that. It was always hard for you.”
I couldn’t tell him how things went from there. I was drinking, more and more. I always made it to work because I didn’t want to lose my booze ticket. Waking up was its own hell. I had to have my “medicine” to start the day, just enough to get me out of the bunkhouse. Not enough to get in the way. When the day was done I could do it right. Finally it got to the point where I needed more and more to get out the door. Then it was over. I had to go and find another job. It wasn’t easy. The boats weren’t working like they used to. I didn’t have enough education to brag about, and my hard living was clear enough that most folks wouldn’t give me a second glance, much less hire me.
Then I found Louis again. This time it was from the shadows under the bridge. He had his army. They would pool their findings and their thievings and make another day. He still had his grin but his body wasn’t interested in big plans, even though his mind still made them. When I saw him, torn up and wasted away, that was the first time I realized how I looked.
“I was lost, lost for a long while there.”
I looked up at Adolphus. It was hard finding the words I needed to say.
“Its good you’re back. I’ve been thinking about you. Bertrand’s been around, trying to get meetings going about getting Métis land again. There may be something for you if you stay here for a while.”
He was so kind. I had to tell him what had brought me back.
“I had this dream, one of those dreams that felt so real it felt like it really happened.” I could see Adolphus knew what I was talking about. “I was walking with Catherine along the edge of a lake. It was that old comfortable feeling, yet in the back of my mind I knew she was gone. She was beautiful and healthy and happy. She smiled at me and told me, ‘Our boys must know the world. There’s so much for them to be aware of.’ She touched my face and she was gone.”
Adolphus leaned forward. “That’s a vision, for sure.”
“I didn’t open my eyes right away when I woke up. I wanted to savour the feeling of her presence. I could even remember her smell. I thought about my boys but this time I let their memory enter me, to be with her. All of us, we were all together for a brief moment and for the first time in a long time I let the tears flow. I cried until I felt like I’d just finished a hard day’s work.”
Adolphus took a sip of his tea. “They h
ave to know the world. What does that mean?”
I looked up at him. “That’s what I was thinking. How could they see the world? Right now I have nothing to give them. I got up that morning at first light, washed myself in the river, straightened up my clothes as best I could, and just walked. I walked toward the city buildings. I needed to clear my head. I didn’t know where I was going but I had a sense. And when I turned the corner I saw two nuns walking in my direction. One of them said, ‘Francis!’ It was Flora.”
“Flora?”
“Joseph Callioux’s daughter, the sister that was here helping us when Catherine was sick. She saw what rough shape I was in and took me in. The convent gave me some fresh clothes and a good breakfast. She’s a teacher there now. I showed her my picture of the boys. She told me, ‘You bring them to me. I will take care of them as though they were my own.’”
“A convent school? What are you asking?” I sensed something darkening in Adolphus.
Just then from up the hill I heard the sound of two boys. I felt a joy rising in my heart as I got up. It was Jean Francis and Daniel. I bent down to meet them and soon they were on top of me, grabbing, laughing, and I was in the middle of it all, crying.
JOVETTE MARCHESSAULT
TRANSLATED BY YVONNE M. KLEIN
The Moon of the Dancing Suns
IMAGE CREDIT: EMILY CARR, PORT RENFREW, 1929, CHARCOAL ON PAPER, VANCOUVER ART GALLERY, EMILY CARR TRUST, VAG 42.3.120 (PHOTO: TREVOR MILLS)
CONTRIBUTOR’S NOTE
THE PERIOD OF THE Second World War was one of extraordinary misfortune. The skies appeared impenetrable and normal life seemed to be turned upside-down. It was as though the business of living had become transfixed while Death galloped rapidly around the world.
Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past Page 11
