by Rudy Wiebe
ALSO BY RUDY WIEBE
Fiction
PEACE SHALL DESTROY MANY (1962)
FIRST AND VITAL CANDLE (1966)
THE BLUE MOUNTAINS OF CHINA (1970)
THE TEMPTATIONS OF BIG BEAR (1973)
WHERE IS THE VOICE COMING FROM? (1974)
THE SCORCHED-WOOD PEOPLE (1977)
ALBERTA / A CELEBRATION (1979)
THE MAD TRAPPER (1980)
THE ANGEL OF THE TAR SANDS (1982)
MY LOVELY ENEMY (1983)
CHINOOK CHRISTMAS (1992)
A DISCOVERY OF STRANGERS (1994)
RIVER OF STONE: FICTIONS AND MEMORIES (1995)
SWEETER THAN ALL THE WORLD (2001)
HIDDEN BUFFALO (2003)
RUDY WIEBE: COLLECTED STORIES, 1955–2010 (2010)
Non-Fiction
A VOICE IN THE LAND (ED. BY W. J. KEITH) (1981)
WAR IN THE WEST: VOICES OF THE 1885 REBELLION (WITH BOB BEAL) (1985)
PLAYING DEAD: A CONTEMPLATION CONCERNING THE ARCTIC (1989)
STOLEN LIFE: THE JOURNEY OF A CREE WOMAN (WITH YVONNE JOHNSON) (1998)
PLACE: LETHBRIDGE, A CITY ON THE PRAIRIE (WITH GEOFFREY JAMES) (2002)
OF THIS EARTH: A MENNONITE BOYHOOD IN THE BOREAL FOREST (2007)
EXTRAORDINARY CANADIANS: BIG BEAR (2008)
Drama
FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE (WITH THEATRE PASSE MURAILLE) (1977)
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA
Copyright © 2014 Jackpine House Ltd.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2014 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.randomhouse.ca
Knopf Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Wiebe, Rudy, 1934–, author
Come back / Rudy Wiebe.
ISBN 978-0-345-80885-1
eBook ISBN 978-0-345-80887-5
I. Title.
PS8545.I38C66 2014 C813′.54 C2014-902259-X
Cover images: (letter) © Bruce Amos, (torn paper) © Robyn Mackenzie, (bird) © Christos Georghiou, all Dreamstime.com
Text images: (bird) © Christos Georghiou / Dreamstime.com; (feather) © Roman Malyshev / Shutterstock.com
v3.1
For my family,
and for
Robert Kroetsch (1927–2011)
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Author’s Note
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
Saturday, May 1, 2010
About the Author
For everyone will be salted with fire.
JESUS (Mark 9:49)
For now we look through a mirror into an enigma, but then face to face.
PAUL (I Corinthians 13:12)
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The “Hal” in this fiction was a character in my first novel, Peace Shall Destroy Many, which was originally published in 1962; republished by Knopf Canada in 2001. The time then was 1944, and Hal was an eight-year-old boy in Wapiti, Saskatchewan, an isolated Mennonite community in the Canadian boreal forest.
R. W.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28, 2010
In bright spring snow a slim woman in a black hoodie walked by along Whyte Avenue leading three children barely higher than her knees. The children clutched mittened hands, strung out like little linked sausages as she hauled them along with her left arm, her right urging them Come on! Come on! towards the green “Walk.”
From inside the coffee shop Hal watched them move across the window wall: blue, pink, purple stuffed parkas passing in a reflecting, streaky world. Could all those wriggly imps be hers? The pink little middle parka skipped twice, it began to shimmy within some body rhythm, tilting its hooded head back and tiny mouth open as if to catch snowflakes on its flickering tongue, and they reached the “Walk” corner at 104th Street with all three links infected by dance. Ignoring the huge Greyarrow bus roaring past them in the slanting snow, they pranced and wriggled south into the wave of pedestrians coming on the crosswalk. The woman’s sharp face bent lower, scolding, but that only added more rhythm to the fling of their heads, their joined arms waving, their splotching feet.
April children dancing through a glassy world fallen brilliant white overnight: O Edmonton rejoice, all’s right with your world.
They had sloshed themselves into disappearance, vanishing one by one past an ancient man bent over his walker wobbling through the snow, vanished completely behind a woman and man coming on. The woman’s short red-denim jacket was flung open to a cream T-shirt, her breast declared in taut crimson: BORED DOE.
Hal laughed aloud. A lovely ironic woman in longing. And clearly not for the handsome oaf flapping his chin at her as they walked by; her perfect profile, it seemed, faced only distance as the right silver edge of the window cut them away.
Good passing show, momentarily better than usual. Hal leaned back in his Double Cup armchair. He considered the chair his, the drooping black leatherette fitting warm around his buttocks, he sat in it every morning except Sunday. If some coffee drinker was already seated there when he arrived, he simply waited him out, he had all the time there was, now, and if Owl came in before him, Owl took the companion chair across the shaky little table and told anyone glancing at the vacant chair that his friend would be along any minute, sorry. Hal lifted his cup, the silver Waterloo University mug he used on Wednesdays, and saw Owl lean forward in his chair: he was staring up at the left corner of the window wall.
There, beyond the double forks of the ash tree growing out of the sidewalk, perched a huge bird; bobbing on the arm of the streetlight. Pitch black in thin flying snow, with something white, large, clamped in its black beak. A raven … yes, that was it, he had never seen such a bird at a street intersection, not in all the years he lived in Edmonton. Its claws clinched tight on the snowy arm.
“She’ll fly the circle,” Owl said happily. “She was sitting on that southeast lamp over there by Kill for Chocolate and she flew straight across Whyte to the northeast post and sat there holding that white thing and then she come across 104th, across to here, and now she’ll fly back over Whyte again, just wait, that southwest post—”
“That’s no circle,” Hal said. “If that’s it, it’s flying a square.”
“Whiteman’s circle.” Hal could hear the grin in Owl’s voice, “Yeah, there she goes … easy …”
The raven crouched, launched itself into the bright, slanting sky. Lifting over the turning barrel of a concrete truck and above six tight lanes of traffic to land, steady, on the arm of the opposite lamppost. It had flown the path of the dancing children. Where were they? Hal had neglected to look after them and now they were gone—silly, he’d been distracted as usual by any passing Bored Doe or bent geezer—but the raven sprang up, up to the roof edge of what he abruptly remembered was the Royal Bank building fifty-six years ago when he came to Edmonton to begin university—and a clump of snow dropped on t
he people waiting on Whyte for “Walk” as the raven scrabbled, flapping on the roof edge. It gained its balance, hesitated, leaning, then swung one, two, three hops past the crumbling chimney and was out of sight on the flat roof. Still holding that white thing in its beak, gone.
“It didn’t complete your Whiteman circle.”
“Come and gone,” Owl said. “Good sign.”
“Good for what?”
“Maybe … maybe bad. Hard to tell sometimes.”
“I know,” Hal said. “And you’ll know which when it happens.”
“Yeah, for sure. Something always happens.”
They were both laughing a little, they splashed each other so often with their mutual skepticisms. Hope is the thing with feathers that perches … abruptly Hal gripped the arms of his chair, hoisted himself to his feet.
“I’m for refill.”
But Owl’s expression shifted; he seemed unwilling to let go. “You know,” he said, “the first bird named in your Bible is a raven.”
“What?” Momentarily Hal’s memory was empty. “There’s birds, lots in the creation stories …”
“Yeah, birds,” Owl said, “but not named. Raven’s named, the flood, he’s in the ark and Noah shoves him out, go look for land.”
“That’s the first bird named in the Bible?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d you know that?”
“Our priest, Fort Good Hope, he didn’t like Raven. He told us that story all the time, raven never coming back, no message to help Noah.”
“Yes, but the dove did, so they knew there was dry land again.”
“So, for the priest bad black raven, good white dove.”
Hal gestured outside, “Edmonton doves, they’re grey.”
Owl stood easily, laughing aloud. He pulled his worn toque down his brown forehead. “Time for hunting and gathering. Thanks again, coffee.”
Hal picked up Owl’s paper cup and his own mug. “Okay. Even when winter comes back end of April.”
“Just a day. If it was gone too long we’d maybe forget it.”
“Huh—Edmonton forget winter! How’s it up north? You hear from your sister?”
“Not yet, this spring—but it won’t be gone there, not yet. Deh-Cho River ice’ll still be three feet thick, but real dangerous now, water under the snow on top.”
“Safer hunting here, eh.”
“For sure, just potholes.” Owl pushed the door, snow twirled in on the draft, and then he was outside, waiting for the light to cross 104th Street. Yes, reverse the black raven. Hal turned and suddenly, as if a switch had flipped in his head, he heard the ceaseless sound of the coffee shop: something they called music these days thumping to a shriek or wail above the mutter of voices, he heard them but could easily refuse to listen, people sitting there forever repeating something, talking jokes or pleading sorrow, the music background actually less and less like any singing he had ever … but Becca was there, for once alone behind the counter lined with packaged food he never saw anyone buy.
Her hand accepted his mug. He groped in his jean pocket for the plastic card and a quarter, her face poised perfectly above her spring-green shirt and bare arms.
“A bit more. Need a hit.”
Becca glanced up, and smiled. Always working, always silently lovely; an unwavering memory delight.
“On the house,” she said. “Snow celebration.”
“Hey, that’s a good one.”
“Only today, tomorrow it’s all gone.”
Hal laughed. “Just wait three days, there’s still May,” he said.
He seated himself with his warm mug. His everlasting northern streaky-white world beyond sheltering glass, today a wall of sloshing sidewalks and streets overlaid with the faint mirror of Double Cup space around him, silver mug and pale hand. He could see himself, dimly, a small, dark mound contemplating itself. The diaphanous window wall—so close if he leaned forward he would touch it—the shadows on the glass reflected him floor to ceiling, a mere spot on a faintly nurtured rubbing of the perfect coffee-shop gravestone—no—lifestone, so still, still but alive. Yes yes he was fine, just fine. Still alive ages after a Canadian bush boyhood and, miracle beyond miracle, an education none of his brothers or sisters could dream of and beautiful Yo and their three children—two … three—stop stupid, stop it. He was okay, his mind quick, sharp; he could concentrate on reading the endless passing bodies on the sidewalk empty and safe as a lifetime pushed behind him, more and more ignorable, forgotten—three boys walked right across the window wall, slouching past in furious talk, their jean pockets sagged barely above the backs of their knees—a lifetime may it please God forgiven.
And on Whyte Avenue light snow whirled in the wind following cars, was crunched into freezing slush by unknowable people and vehicles going and going, gone and sometimes coming back, thirty or forty thousand machines crossing this intersection—was that what they said?—and perhaps more humans every day and night in all directions, the traffic of street and sidewalk an instinctive, polite, thoughtless Canadian order.
A city bus sighed right across the window. Empty.
This unending scarf woven of movement, every van and pickup and bike and car and crew-cab and hatchback and wheelchair delivery truck different, every single human body moving, and unique, every day. And whenever he came every day it was here, human and different and empty and warm, he need do nothing but sit snug and look. Empty. Comforted because he needed none.
Orange. A brilliant orange jacket above blue jeans walked out of the right edge of the glass wall. Long strides passing left fast, thick downfill sewn in squares of taut seams, standing orange collar zipped up high over lower nose and ear, exposed forehead curved to a widow’s peak of light-brown hair fluffed back with snow—ends curled! A moustache hidden by the collar?
Hal stared in stunned amazement: the tall, slender man with his half-hidden face gliding so fast across the mirrored glass to the trampled street corner and wheeling south into the crosswalk squished wet by cars, the long strides, the shift of shoulders inside the tight orange … there was … he was seeing, something, was it possible, a label, “The Down People of Canada/Michael S. Freed”—the tiny black label on the orange lining he had once found himself forced to remember beyond knowing, remember and remember until steadily, deliberately, he thought he had buried it forever into nothing—“6820 Size M Down 100%”—he saw that label he knew to be sewn inside that seamed orange jacket, that drift of light-brown hair curled at its edges above the crossing crowd—that high hairline of head turn! There would be a moustache—Hal exploded in a scream:
“Gabe!”
He leaped to his feet, rammed himself through the door and past the square pillar and across the slipping sidewalk, hit a waiting man’s shoulder for balance and he stayed upright and was into Whyte Avenue, he was charging through sloppy slush right into the first wave of coming cars accelerating west at him across the intersection on their green light, he dodged into spaces between flashing, honking trunks and hoods though he was looking beyond them, beyond, he was waving his arms and screaming above the traffic,
“Gabe! Gabriel!”
as he floundered and fought the sliding street and the next wave of westbound cars reached him as he gained the third lane, their brakes squished as horns squalled but he was already across to the centre boulevard,
“Gabe!”
and a crash burst behind him, barely behind, and a hard-green pickup shuddered to a stop in front of him, horn blaring, as his shoulder—he just twisted to the side—slammed against the driver door—
“You stupid shit!” the driver shrieked out of her opening window.
“My son!” Hal yelled in her face and hurled himself around the front of the truck, hammered the hood with his right hand for balance as he leaped into the next lanes—at that instant the coming car was still two lengths away—and he was across on the south sidewalk even as he heard more brakes and horns squeal behind him, something else crush! and
more plastic and glass break even louder but he was on the old Royal Bank sidewalk and running south as fast as his straining body could propel him through the splotching snow while just barely keeping balance—startled people at the bus stop jerked out of his path—he was already gasping, his legs so massively heavy he was leaning forward more and more as his head yearned for speed, he was squinting to see and his exhausted old body betrayed him, slammed him crooked against a wall at the corner of the alley opening onto 104th Street and he knew like a kick in his shuddering gut that—where was he running? He was gasping in sudden whiteness. The Orange Downfill could have gone in any direction, down either street or avenue, even east or west down these alleys, past—where was he running?
The raven scrabbled up there, disappeared west.
He stumbled west down the potholed alley, sliding and flapping his arms but somehow not falling, not even to his knees while staring into every crevice of building on both sides, around battered power poles. Why would a tall man in an orange jacket turn into this miserable back lane? No one was anywhere—a small woman in an apron stood beside a dumpster, her hand pulling a cigarette from her face—he could say nothing, not even gesture. His fingers and ears and arms and face were on fire with cold, his stomach heaving from that burst of running and screaming; he was barely in motion now and his right leg cramped, he found himself doubled over at the corner of a building. He could clutch, hold onto the wall and hide behind another dumpster and abruptly he heaved, convulsed into vomiting. He had not run in years, coffee and cereal and orange juice and sliced strawberries and more coffee like a smashed hose against the dumpster, uggch, get rid of it, he didn’t need it, turn away quick, he was limping in the parking lane along the length of the TIBC bank. Spit and swallow and spit, spit out the taste, flex the useless right leg. He grabbed a handful of snow and swiped it over his face and the ice stunned him, get away. No parked bank cars, get away, he stumped north along the wall, balancing better now and he was at Whyte again still swallowing bile, fainter now, on the south side in the middle of the block rubbing at his wet face with his wet freezing hand, which way dearest God and loving Father lead me, O
