“You know what they say about Dawson,” he replied. “What we’ve got here is a drinking town with a mining problem.”
She laughed, relieved, like she hadn’t thought he could tell a joke. She’d asked Angie what he did for a living the second day she was here. That’s how you could spot a southerner two steps into a conversation. What do you do, they always wanted to know. Like the most interesting thing about you was what someone paid you for. She acted like she thought Angie was joking. “A gold miner,” she kept saying.
Now she said, sort of casually but there was something intent in her, “Will you take me there sometime?”
“To the claim?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Yeah. Okay.” I saw him think about the idea and start to like it. It was things like that that let me know what he was starting to feel about her. “I’ll tell you one day when and we’ll go.”
“Okay,” she said and a smile started on her face and then went all the way across, but slowly. There was something about her sometimes, like she wasn’t all the way grown up. Like she hadn’t earned the wrinkles on her face. She was all kinds of trouble. “Okay, you tell me when.”
“I’ll take you fishing too,” he said. “We’ll go down by where the old nets used to be and take my boat out. I’ve got a boat, you know.”
She shook her head, and her dull eyes widened and then she dropped her face. I wondered again who she reminded me of. “I don’t go in boats.”
“Not ever?”
She shook her head again.
“Neither did she,” he said.
And I saw that Aileen didn’t have to ask who he meant, so she wasn’t stupid and she knew what it was they were all the time really talking about. And maybe she was behind the whole conversation, already knowing how it would go, because the next thing she said was, “Jason, how did she die?”
It had come out rushed and stiff in a way that made it clear she’d practised it, and I could tell Jason noticed that too. He opened his mouth and I had no idea what he was going to say, so I said, “It didn’t happen here in town.”
“Where did it happen?” Aileen asked, looking from Jason to me, like she wasn’t sure which one she was talking to.
“It was—” I began.
Jason was looking straight at me when he said, “You weren’t there.” Then he turned back to Aileen and said again, “She wasn’t there.”
“But Jason …” Aileen stopped herself, seeming to see how he was doing his thing of leaving the room from the seat beside her, going back somewhere deep into himself. More gently, she asked, “Can you tell me what happened? She was my sister. I don’t have anybody else.”
Jason was thinking hard. I saw his hands in fists in his lap.
“There’s nothing to tell,” I said. “It was just a—”
Jason cut me off again. “Aileen, you like stories?”
“What?”
I was so pissed then I almost left them to it. If there was a way to circle around a thing instead of getting to it, he would find it.
“Aileen, I’ll tell you a story, okay.”
Joey Innis was sitting at the table across from us, same place he sat every time he came down to the bar, doing the thing he did most times he sat at that table, with his hand tucked down his pants, and the tears just running down his sorry cheeks. He didn’t make a sound, but somehow Aileen had noticed him there. She was staring at him. Good, I thought, let her be a little afraid of this place. Let her think there’s something a little wrong with people here. Then Aileen looked up at me as if she knew what I was thinking. I grinned back at her. “You’re going to tell me a story?” she asked Jason. She hesitated. “Like a … First Nations story?” She looked like she wasn’t sure what he would think of those words, or as if she’d just learned them. “I mean, it is, a Tr’ond …” Her voice faded away.
“Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in,” I said. It didn’t surprise me she hardly knew the word, because it was the one we gave ourselves. She wouldn’t have hesitated to say her own people’s word, when it was still our name, even a year ago.
She had the sense to look ashamed. “I didn’t know. I thought you were … I thought everybody up here was Inuit. But a man at the hotel told me—”
“Sure,” said Jason. “Sure, I’ll tell you a Han story. That’s not just our people, that’s a whole bunch of First Nations around here. But sure, I’ll tell you one of our stories. My mother used to tell me stories she learned from my father’s mother. I can tell you how the world began, if you want.”
She was looking at Joey again. There was something pitiful about her. Something I almost liked and something I hated, something weak. I remembered that Jason had said she came here because her man had left her. She was that kind. Went and fell in love with someone that didn’t want her. Weak and hard at the same time. So I couldn’t even all the way feel sorry for her. “Okay,” she said softly.
“Well,” said Jason, “things began with a man and a woman.”
Old Man always was. There was not a time when Old Man was not. Long ago, there was only water, and Old Man travelled the water in a boat, looking for land. After he had travelled a ways, he sent down a duck to swim beneath the water and see if he could find land below it. But the duck came to the surface and had found no land. Then, after some time, Old Man sent down an otter. But the otter came to the surface and had found no land. Then the Old Man sent down a badger. But when the badger came to the surface, he, too, had found no land.
At last, Old Man sent down a muskrat. But the muskrat did not return. The muskrat was gone so long that Old Man said to the other animals in the boat, Duck, Otter, Badger, Muskrat has drowned. And as he was preparing to paddle away, Muskrat appeared at the surface. He was exhausted and nearly drowned. In his claws was a ball of mud.
Old Man took the ball of mud from Muskrat and rolled it between his hands. Then he blew on it and it became the world. In the world, he made mountains and rivers. He made oceans and lakes. He made fishes and birds, berries and flowers. Then, with a bit of clay he had, he made a wife.
Together, Old Man and his wife, Old Woman, decided how things would be in the world. Together, they made people. Old Man said he must have first say about how things would be made. Old Woman said, All right, but I will have final say.
Old Man said, Let people have eyes and a mouth, set up and down on their faces.
Old Woman said, Yes, they shall have eyes and a mouth. But let them be set crosswise on their faces.
Old Man said, Let people have ten fingers, five on each hand.
Old Woman said, Ten are too many. They will have eight fingers and two thumbs. Four fingers and one thumb on each hand.
And so people were made.
Then Old Man and Old Woman argued. Should people live forever, like gods, or must they die, like animals?
Old Man said, I will throw this buffalo chip in the water. If it floats, people will die for four days and then live again. If it sinks, they will die forever.
He threw the buffalo chip in the water and it floated.
Old Woman said, No, no, no. I will throw this stone in the water. If it floats, people will die for four days and then live again. If it sinks, they will die forever.
She threw the stone in the water and it sank.
Old Woman said, Then people shall die forever.
And so people die forever.
But Old Man was angry with Old Woman. He thought he should have got to decide about the world. So when Old Woman went to cook some fish for dinner, Old Man said that women would have to bear children. He said that out of the suffering and humiliation of their mothers’ bodies, children should be born. And they would carry with them their debts. Their debts would be like secrets in their hearts that made them dark and quiet. They would sometimes hurt each other and would not know why. After their children were born, mothers would grow old, and their children would find them ugly. But because they had debts in their hearts, children would become men who woul
d find wives who looked like their mothers. And their wives would love them. As their mothers had. And the love of men for their wives and mothers would be a kind of murder.
When Old Man sat down to eat fish with his wife, he found it was cooked in fat and delicious and hot in his mouth, and he ate up his share and hers. Although it burned his hands, he did not wait for it to cool. He saw the way she looked at him and knew she was sorry for what she had done, but he would not forgive her.
When he fell silent and looked at us, my mouth was still open. Not much surprised me, but I never thought he’d make a lie of something like that. Those stories were ours. I never remembered half of them, though my father had liked to tell them to my sister and me. His stories were not the same as my mother’s or the Elders’, and he never told them the same way twice. But somehow they were always the same. And the stories were about the way they’d always been told by other families before us, and not about twisting them to tell someone something you didn’t have the guts to say.
I remembered him and his mother and how they’d tell those stories back and forth to each other. Mara loved them. They weren’t her own people’s stories, but she took them like they were and would tell them to Jason over and over. They both were like that, though, and would sooner give you a coloured-up tale than a simple answer to whatever question you asked them. When we were all still kids, my sister used to bring me by Mara’s house most nights in the winter, and we’d sit there round the stove while she told Jason a story to put him to sleep. The house always had a smell about it like old rotted leaves, like the forest in fall, when everything is waiting for winter. But it was warm round the stove, and Violet and I weren’t the only ones to come sit there to listen. When Jason was not even school-age yet, the stories were mostly from the Bible, or that’s what Mara said, but they were different from the ones we heard at St. Paul’s on Sundays and maybe had the mark of her on them too. For somebody blind, she could make you see every solitary thing she spoke of. I remember in that stale-smelling house half-buried in snow knowing just how a grain of sand shone under a Jerusalem sun. And then when Jason got older, the stories weren’t about God or St. John anymore, but about Raven or Bear, and Mara made them her own too. And even as Jason got older, she kept telling him those stories, one a night, and sometimes he would even tell her a story back, and it was the way they talked to each other and told each other things, because I heard few words pass between them other times. Remembering the stories Mara told him, I got up and took a seat beside Aileen, to watch her.
And it was then I realized who she reminded me of. Though it had been almost ten years since I’d seen that wide-mouth smile. And though Lopita’s eyes were black and bright and had never looked unsure or caught like Aileen’s always did. But when she showed her teeth, when her mouth stretched around a grin that seemed to catch her by surprise, it made me think of that other smile. And even now, with just the glint of a question in her eyes, I thought of Lopita.
She seemed to be trying to think what to do next, and I knew from her face the story made her like him better, made her want to ask him more questions, made her want to stay here longer. And I knew before I opened my mouth that she wouldn’t believe me. She would be the kind to prefer a well-told lie to the truth. And there’d be nothing I could do to convince her. Not now, when what I’d tell her was true. And not later, when it would be a lie.
Mara
SEVEN
WHEN WE ARRIVED at her house, Nellie told me that her own daughters would be home from school soon and I would have to be very nice to them, as I’d be sharing a room with her oldest daughter, Megan, and it would be a surprise to them both to find another little girl living in their home. She took me by the hand and put my suitcase in the other, and then she led me up a flight of stairs.
“Here,” she said, pulling me through a door. “This is where you’ll sleep. Alexander put a mattress on the floor for you, see?” She grabbed my hand and pushed it onto the mattress. I stumbled, startled, and dropped my suitcase. She cried out, and I understood that it had landed on her foot. “You have to be more careful,” she said. “Being the way you are, you won’t be able to go to school. But you can’t be underfoot all the time. You’ll have to learn to be resourceful. The blind are very resourceful.”
She hesitated, and I felt for the mattress behind me and sat down on it. Then I heard her take light, quick steps across the room. “Well, I’ll turn the light off. This room doesn’t get much light, but I don’t suppose you’ll need the lamp like Megan does. See that you check it’s off. The switch should be down, like this. Come feel. No need to waste money lighting up the room if …” She stopped again, and I withdrew my hand from the switch, which I’d slid my fingers along like she asked. “This will be an adjustment for everyone,” she said at last. “I’ll leave you to get settled.”
After I heard her steps go down the stairs, I lay down on the mattress. I thought about getting up to feel my way around the room, so I’d know where things were and be able to be careful, like she’d asked. But in the end I fell asleep there, and didn’t wake until I heard their voices at the door.
Aileen
late June 1996
EIGHT
“THAT IS NOT THE END of the story,” said Minnie.
I turned my head to find she was now sitting beside me at the bar. Something about her made me nervous, and I had a feeling she didn’t mind that. She seemed always to be watching me and Jason, always nearer than I thought she was. But I was glad for something to say beyond wondering what Jason’s strange story meant and why he told it to me, or if he only wanted to distract me from the question I had asked him. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“I heard that story plenty of times, and that’s not how it ends. He made that ending up.”
Jason had his head down, lighting a cigarette.
“It ends with Old Man and Old Woman agreeing that the people will die forever. There isn’t any more,” said Minnie. She had a flat, expressionless face. From her eyes and mouth I couldn’t have told how sharp her words were.
Jason sucked on his cigarette hard and didn’t look at either of us.
“Maybe there are different versions of the story,” I said quietly.
Minnie barely glanced at me. “That end sounds more like something from the Bible or something his mother would say than anything that ever came out of our Elders’ mouths. I’ve never heard it that way. Never.”
Jason said, “Minnie.”
Minnie looked closely at me then. “He’s a liar, you know. Oh yes he is. You are.”
Jason said, “I don’t have to take shit from you.”
Minnie said, “You ask anyone here. Everyone knows he’s a liar. Isn’t he,” she asked the bartender. “Isn’t he. Don’t you believe anything he says. Nobody does.”
Jason raised his bottle and slammed it down on the bar. Hard. We both jumped. The bottle did not break. As beer foamed and spilled over onto the pitted wood of the bar, Jason shoved back his chair and walked to a table at the other side of the room.
“Jason,” called Angel, whom I now noticed sitting at a table near enough that maybe she’d heard everything. The two of them were like gulls circling a meal. More and more, I felt like the meal. “Come sit down with me.”
But Jason didn’t answer and took a seat without sending a word or a look her way.
I turned back to Minnie. “Why did you say that. Why did you say that to him in front of everyone.”
Minnie said, “He’s got no right to change the stories. He can make up whatever stories he wants about himself. I don’t say anything when he does that. He’s got no right to change the stories.”
Across from us, Angel stood up. Minnie and I watched her cross the room and then lean over the table to where Jason’s head was bent down, studying the table as steadily as I’d seen him do anything. We couldn’t hear what he said, but we saw Angel straighten from the back, her spine drawing up. We saw how quickly she walked out the door after
that.
Minnie said to me, “What are you doing here anyway. What made you come here now?”
I said, “I had nowhere else to go.”
Minnie watched me for a moment and I looked away. “That’s how most folks come here,” she said.
I thought I could understand why Jason would say whatever he said to Angel. He made a kind of sense to me. For some reason, I thought suddenly of a time in my twenties, loving Stephan. Of course it was something else with him—it was sex and it was how he looked at me and all kinds of other things besides. But there was that way in me, how I felt like I could look at this man and know him. And because I knew him, I loved him. And because I loved him, I forgave him. You could forgive anything.
I walked to the door and looked out across the street and then pressed my face to the glass to peer down along the road. I couldn’t see Angel anywhere. The sky had a quality of blue in it, a near darkness that I hadn’t seen since I’d got here. I’d heard by August the leaves would begin to change colour. This strange brightness and these dry, hot days were already written over with their end.
Opening the door and letting it close behind me, I imagined the road buried in snow. How high would it rise? How cold would it be?
There was a sound and I saw, around the side of the building, a girl crouched on the ground. A cigarette burned down in her hand.
“Angel?” I said.
Angel threw the cigarette behind the building and stood up.
I didn’t like to see women cry. I caught a glimpse of her tiny, pointed teeth like pearls before she covered her mouth with her hand. There was a bloodless look about her pale brown face, and she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and turned away from me.
She said, “He kissed me.”
“He kissed you?” I looked at her. I knew she wasn’t lying.
“And then, inside, he said … I just wanted to know if he was all right. I liked the story he told you.”
In the Land of Birdfishes Page 8
