by Rudy Wiebe
Top border of page, tiny, written at right angles
I cry for what is lost, and conversely for what will be lost, losing lost, losing lost, a nice skipping rhyme for a little kid but I’m too old. I look to the future at some date; I will be forgotten, the past over. I wish I could cry for and cry with all who cry, everyone crying inside their laughter, but I am selfish, I can barely cry for a few. I laugh but I cry. The white rose wilts, the red petals fall—why create at all if all your life is losing lost Aug 31/85 Does this help you I don’t know
September Sunday 1
Dinner at Mir and Leo’s, whole family. Travel and wedding talk and laughing. I egg Denn on too loud, Dad as usual not amused
Wide waterfall on High Level Bridge lit for Labour Day / bridge steel burns a sheet of light far down into the river it just keeps rollin’ along
September Monday 2
Cross the High Level, play tennis with Denn, all UofA courts full and more people come, they watch as they wait; naturally; but, my game totally falls apart, I can’t play with people watching me, I want to run away, I continue to hit the net. The joke is that they’re not even paying attention to me, why would they give a hoot how I play a game? And yet I fall apart
September Tuesday 3
How can that be my last entry? It at least indicates a character trait of mine, the shy nervousness when people watch me / maybe more than that—these are the kind of things that are so useless in the late discoveries of one’s existence And also my accidental, my accurate double-meaning choice of words
September Tuesday 3 across August Thursday 15 to Sunday 18
Please, if you must insist on a funeral, do not have it in Mennonite Church Edmonton, I hate the place: it never taught me how to live. Oh stupid again, blaming others, actually good people, making requests: did I want to learn? Do whatever you want—you made the effort to bring me into the world (what? a moment of joy?) you (and the world) can make the effort to clean up what remains
(Note: if you don’t have it, you just don’t have it. I can talk all I want about that and what would that explain? Extreme double meaning here, and do you know what I’m talking about? No? Can I talk more clearly? No.)
As for the people I love—forgive me, I am obviously not worthy of you. But I have, and I do, love you.
If I could write out the words of a song for you (in your style), I would do so, but for all the songs I know, I don’t know any that would do justice—I weep—I cry Oh Lord, why can I not show love—I can’t do anything without you: and obviously can’t do anything with you. Have pity
Grrrrreat
September Wednesday 4
I’m sorry (
Well enough of this
Well enough of this
The only words in the journal written in pencil. Hal had just enough control to check: the last words in Spiral Notebook (3) were dated June 22. He already knew every remaining page of the black Daily Planner 1985 was blank after Wednesday, September 4. He knew he would never find another Gabriel word, however often he might look; not an ink or pencil mark on thirty-four dated week pages. Except one:
September Saturday 21
Wedding, Mir, Aspen Creek / white rose, red rose
O Gabriel my son, O my son, my son Gabriel
The leaves did nothing
neither did the trees, nor the birds rehearsing
their long fall journeys to their homing
south, they all saw him back the pickup slowly
between the pale black-knotted trunks of aspen
along the track bent away from the cliff cabin
very carefully so the wide tires crushed no
small birches, the youngest already thinking winter
and bowing down to let him pass over and straightening
again so that two days later it would seem the pale
blue steel and glass and white fibreglass
had simply grown, been sifted over
by autumn snow, a strange extrusion suddenly there
on the insistence of some green and barely yellow
lightning and the moist soil where peeling aspen
stood dead grey, enjoyed for too many summers
by armies of insatiable worms, a month
after we two were together exactly there
cutting a narrow path through grass, brush
together, sparing those very birches
to contain this indifferent hiding. But now
you are alone. There is no need to work quickly
because of course you know you have all the time
there is and not even the thickening night
need hurry you in this boreal stillness
where am I
why am I not here as you make your bed
so neatly, your cabin pillowcase and sheet, sheathing
the foam mattress in a blue matching the ribbed
metal you lay it on, as you miter the brighter
blue corners of the blanket as your mother
taught you, as you raise your head
stare into the deepening perspective of trees
hear a pest of robins harry a great horned owl
before you steadily continue—why don’t I stretch
out my hand to your shoulder as you drop
to your knees, bow to the chortling exhaust, as ever
do such neat work, not a fold or wrinkle in the winding
tape, when you climb in again and clamp
the tailgate up tight and pull the canopy door
down firmly over the white hose, as you remove
your shoes, fold your favourite tan jacket beside you
to the acrid mutter of motor
all this relentless, steady work
and when you lay your long body
down on your back and pull the blue blanket
up against your throat and breathe
smell
why am I not there, my arms around you
saying Gabriel
Gabriel
Machine: - from the Greek mechane / machos, contrivance
- from the West Teutonic magan, to be able
- any instrument able to, employed to transmit, force
Humans rely on countless machines without thinking
Because that is why they have contrived them: to apply
Mechanical force through their various connected parts
In order to change our environment, to control and alter
Our surroundings or ourselves for our convenience, our omfort
They are built by imaginative logic, they operate by logic
And logic tells us that at some point they will invariably
Break down and then there will be a discoverable
Logical reason for how they must be fixed in order
That they will function again this is unlike human beings
If you hold that humans function like machines
A Chevrolet three-quarter-ton truck, in Alberta mostly called
A pickup, is a contrivance for moving things, for 96,773.8 miles
This blue pickup has moved things, from a family camper
To lumber or a kitchen stove or garbage or comfortably carried
People from one place to another, whatever it is loaded
With and wherever it is steered, besides all the hours
It has been forced to stand and idle in searing cold
Why is it so reliable?
A machine this used, this complex, has infinite reasons
To stop functioning, to sputter, to hiccough, to rattle
To a stop. So why, here among these small birches, to the last
Whiff of gas vapour in its tank, why is this particular machine
Of such staggering reliability, how is it possible that such
A ludicrously finite contrivance for moving things
For standing inert
Is able to transmit such unending
Force
The black grid of the high c
ity bridge
was long my fear, the quick valley
with rocks and trees and gravel-bars
and water motionless as sky, the deep
welcoming air
I should have known you better
That night the animals came
First the twitchy squirrels, perhaps they heard
the engine sputter as they leaped from spruce
to poplar, heard the click click click of the machine
cooling, having done everything it could do, so completely
reliable, and then the flutter of bats and the invisible insects
they hear, the porcupine climbing down ponderously
from the tree notch where she slept sunning herself
all day, humpling through fallen leaves, the nosy badger
a scurry of mice, two beavers heaving themselves
up the cliff from the creek and snipping, peeling
an evening breakfast of aspen before settling to their night’s
work of cutting. Four white-tailed deer wandered by,
nostrils wide, a spruce grouse treading so lightly
two hesitant rabbits, perhaps the black she-bear the Cree
trapper said lives in the valley though neither he nor anyone
has ever seen her track, not yet, his medicine more certain
than tracks in that shadow, there, beyond the edge of your
left eye, the hunched darkness that isn’t there when you
twitch to stare at it, but if you walk quietly
enough you may smell a faint musk, like a memory
of black not quite touchable. Three stepping deer
muleys this time, and then evening coyotes begin
to call and answer, crying high beyond their echo
all along the valley
What did they say, the animals?
Happy are the empty
for they shall be filled
Happy are the dead
for their eyes see no more
Happy are the poor in spirit
for they will know
Or sing?
Were you there when
Everybody knows the
When peace like
Nobody knows the
Their voices may still be there matted
in the earth with the September leaves and you
would feel them if you walked there again, your feet
and body bones shiver with their barking, their raw
laughter, their squeals and long carrying sorrow
their aloneness like the moon fading behind
cloud but always somewhere, on the other side
of the earth perhaps and, as it seems, gone but
always somewhere, growing larger or waning but
forever there, more and more, a desperation roaming
up and down the valley like the gigantic moose
a black shift between the silver trees, calling
and then at last hearing a faint answer, you cannot
tell is it sound, is it echo, is it the torque of intense
listening in the harmony whorls of your ear
is it Coyote still and pointing at the sky
like you with mouth fallen open
softly, silently now the moon
walks the night in a silver rune
It did not snow the first night, though clouds
trundled noisily up the valley, hesitated, sniffed
over the cliff like an incontinent old man poking
at the world with his cane and cackling heh heh
when he turns over something worse than even he had
imagined. Snow fell the second night, a humming
warmth edging leaves and branches, the blue
metal, the fibreglass modulating into flawless
white and only the black-knotted aspen remained
grey and groaning in their occasional movement, stiffening
And the long knife lies inside
the canopy that has always been more or less
white, lies waiting to be unsheathed, waiting
for an uncle’s soft, indelible approach.
there is a sound not like a child or other small animal
alone a sound like people holding each other anyone
whoever may be somehow at hand heads perhaps
bumping knocking please please but there is no
answer a sound groping with fingertips or
sudden fistfuls of clutching and finding
only alone an indestructible sound
like rain like snow like bullets
striking air or some
thing more sensitive
than air a sound
like
like
The telephone shrilled, an explosion in his paralyzed mind. Hal bumbled to his feet, grabbed at the basement receiver, dropped it but saw the number and collapsed, rolled onto his back again while clutching it, jabbed the right button.
“Dad … hello Dad?”
“Miriam … how, how … hey … are you!”
“What’s wrong, Dad, what—?”
“Sorry—no—I’m okay, good good, I just swallowed—arrgggh—some coffee wrong …” (Why was he lying?) “I’m fine … especially now, you, how are you all, you four darlings?”
“A bit late, decaf I hope—please be careful, sweet Dad … well, we’re all usual here, like usual.”
“So. So Michelle’s through her friend disaster?”
Miriam’s easy laugh rang in his ear, “C’mon, it’s two days! You know their ‘Forever’! They’re in her room studying … at least that’s what they said, Grade Eight math.”
“Good … you heard from Emilia, she all right?”
“Just talked on Skype. Has she called you, she didn’t say?”
“Not since last week.”
“She looks relieved, even on the blurry computer, she’s glad she moved to Santiago, such a beautiful city, the Andes she says, and the ESL students are better than in Buenos Aires. Not in English but eager, they want to learn so badly.”
“She has friends, in Santiago?”
“Not yet, but she will, soon. I think that’s what she’s happy about: no one she has to be friends with like Leo’s family in BA, all their heavy—”
“Yeah, their disappearances, politics—heavy stuff.”
“Emilia loves them, you know her, so understanding. But it’s too heavy sometimes, and there’s nothing to do but listen, especially with the aunts for a year now so she’s sort of happy to get away, six months, I can’t blame her …”
“Good, see something else.”
“Chile’s as bad as Argentina for memories, it won’t last.”
“See, better like me to know only one word of Spanish, ‘adios’ and that’s it!”
“German’s not such a happy language.”
“True—and Low German’s hardly better. But I think there’s some of you in your lovely daughter —if necessary, she can be a sort of avoider, eh what?”
Miriam’s superb laughter again. “Hey! I think she’s more an ‘evader,’ like you!”
“No no, get it right, I’m not so much underhanded as slippery, I elude things I want to avoid.”
They were both laughing, able as always to feel quickly happy together, momentarily.
“I should never play word games with you!”
“No no, you should, words play real good, especially on the phone.”
“I know, and you always know more than enough for a comeback.”
“Yeah,” said Hal, suddenly heavy as guilt.
“Dad? Something wrong?”
The Orange Downfill, he had to … “Nothing’s wrong,” he lied quickly. “Still alive, it’s enough.”
“Da-ad!”
“Sorry.”
They were both silent; waiting. Finally Miriam said, “I saw in the Sun today Edmonton got its standard end-of-April snow.”
“Yeah … today it’s melting.”
“
It’s not even raining here. Why don’t you get in your fast Celica and come out, walk around English Bay, Stanley Park a few days? Michelle would love it, evenings getting longer and everything’s lush green, there’s no snow in Jasper or the Coquihalla.”
“Well …”
“You promise, but you haven’t come … it’s months.”
Confess something. “I went into the basement, I opened two Gabe boxes.”
Silence.
“I haven’t touched those boxes since Yo and I took them down …”
Silence lengthened, then Miriam murmured, “ ‘85. Everything stops.”
“And starts—you and Leo, soon your lovely kids.”
“That’s not why you opened them.”
“No. I only got into two, all the paper—not his things—his two diaries and the notebooks and I suddenly thought—”
“Before Frankfurt or after?”
“Both, ’84 and ’85, and his number three notebook, that’s the same time, longer thoughts and everything dated, a pocket notebook too and there’s quite a few loose pages and—” Hal stopped himself, then continued quickly before Miriam could ask the obvious question, “Yeah, he writes quite a lot, daily stuff, also lists of definitions and has discussions with himself about God the Father, the Creator, and his problems with him, and word prayers and anger—but nothing about Jesus. Not a word. And I can’t remember ever talking with Gabe about Jesus either, no memory at all. All the times we talked, isn’t that strange?”
“Of course you talked about Jesus, you even taught his Sunday School class a whole year. You certainly talked about Jesus.”
“That was when he was little, six or seven …”
“Sure, but you did after too—”
“Yes, I know we did, but I can’t remember! Not one exact thing I could say, now. And then I thought of Norman, he was in Gabe’s Sunday School class too, how he … how he was gone … he was even younger, twenty … remember?”
“Yes,” Miriam said faintly. “In his locked room. Right above his parents’ bedroom.”
“Gabe and I were doing fall cleanup at the cabin when Yo phoned and told us, and then we went down to the creek, we looked at the beaver dams, they weren’t very high that autumn. We talked, I remember, we sat on a log …”
