Children of the Day

by Sandra Birdsell

  That’s my girl, Oliver said with a grin, as Sara set the plate down in front of him. Now how’s about we get this show going, I’ve got customers waiting.

  There was a moment of silence, interrupted by Katy’s chiding, There are people in the world who are starving, and you make fun with food.

  The crying in the classroom downstairs grew louder as Alvina neared the fire escape, and she realized it was coming from the second-grade room. Miss White came hurrying up the stairs. I think you’d better come down and see what you can do with Simon, she called.

  Alvina found him lying beside his teacher’s desk; when she saw the scatter of foolscap papers around him, the crashing of her heart diminished. Her little brother was red-faced with anger as he knocked his heels against the floor.

  How many? Alvina asked the teacher, who stood with her back pressed against the blackboard, her young face betraying frustration. Several students were gawking, but most were going about their business. He got two mistakes, one of the boys volunteered, and was shushed by the teacher, who crouched and began picking up the papers.

  Alvina knelt beside her brother, loosened his collar and began rubbing his breastbone. Moments later he reached for her, his hands hot against the back of her neck. She scooped him into her lap, amazed as she always was by the amount of heat from such a small body. She believed she felt the blood flowing in his limbs, the electricity firing his muscles, cells multiplying and radiating energy. He was a complication of tissue, sinew, skin and bones, and at his centre was a pulsating, transcendent amoeba, his spirit, Simon.

  She knew not to try to persuade him that two errors on any test were not a cause for rage. Instead she set him onto his feet, snared his bow tie from beneath the teacher’s desk, tucked in his shirt and poked the bow tie into a trouser pocket. She sent him back to his desk with the promise to help him correct the errors during lunch.

  Then Alvina was back upstairs, where she stood at the window and leafed through a magazine. Feeling as though her scalp had been peeled back like a lid on a can, her brains a pile of worms writhing in the exposed air, as she took in the images of a photograph. She turned the page and saw another image, and another.

  At first she thought she was looking at an explosion, a heap of debris, a pile of boards in striped pajamas, scattered about like pick-up sticks. Then, in the foreground, she noticed a hand. Its fingers curled, a wrist, a forearm, that led to the face of a child and its blackened mouth opened to the sky. The pile of exploded debris was human. Hundreds of cadavers strewn about in a black pit.

  Holy, holy, holy.

  The page closed, and the magazine was gently taken from Alvina’s hands. I’m sorry, but you weren’t meant to see that one, Miss White said. I should have gone through the magazines before I brought them to school. That happened during the world war. They were Jews, she said, in answer to Alvina’s unspoken question.

  NINE

  Female matters

  LIVER EMERGED from the river path into a clearing by the light-spangled water and saw the ferry nudged into the ramp on the opposite shore. Thoughts of his quarrel with Sara, the call he’d heard while going along the path, vanished. He went down to the landing, the clay shore crazed and crunching underfoot, wafers sliding away and revealing the sweating ground underneath. He picked up a tire iron leaning against a post and banged on a guide wire, making it hum.

  Moments later Ulysse ducked out from the far motor shed, his red shirt a splotch of welcome. I seen you coming, he’d likely say, although it wasn’t possible. He waved and returned to the shed. The engine coughed and sputtered to silence. A sound of metal striking against metal rose up, and Oliver dropped to his haunches, prepared to wait.

  Throughout all of Oliver’s young life, Ulysse had been either coming towards him or going away, as he did on the ferry. Coming more often and staying longer after Oliver’s father had died. During those times, Ulysse had brought with him a whiff of the places he’d been, the smoky grass odour of the North Saskatchewan, of spruce forests and mushrooms, a green smell of the Waterhen marshes. He brought the voice of Oliver’s father, and a way of being near to Oliver without seeming to take notice of him.

  There were times when he would enter the kitchen in the early morning, expecting to find Ulysse asleep on the floor beside the stove, and be left as hollow as a reed to discover that the pad of blankets his mother had stitched together for Ulysse’s infrequent sojourns had been rolled up and fastened with cord.

  Yes, you can be sure he’s left. It’s beyond me why you should be surprised, his mother said. She sipped hard on the remains of a cigarette, took a lid off the cookstove and dropped the butt into the embers. A fire Ulysse had likely built before departing. She poked at the embers with an iron, as though she was angry. Her dark hair was gathered in a large smooth bun at the back of her head, shining as always, but the crescent-shaped impressions beneath her eyes betrayed the sickness faintly present under her skin.

  She unrolled the pad and went out into the yard to pound it against the side of the house, and then hung it on a line to expose it to the elements. When next the bedroll was needed, Ulysse would sleep more soundly with the scent of the outdoors, she said, explaining the care she took for his uncle’s comfort. She understood the need for the familiar to help a person fall asleep, as she was a woman who’d been left too young without a man.

  Ulysse has always been a strange one, him, she said. The strangeness had been wished upon him by an Indian woman. A Sioux had lost her child when a stray bullet passed through her tent during the troubles at Batoche. She took Ulysse to replace her loss. She grabbed him from his mother’s arms and made off. Weeks later she returned him, tucked down into a backboard and left in a meadow to be discovered by children out picking berries. From then on, Ulysse was known to be strange, she said. His first walking steps took him through the flap of the tent and across the hunting camp to the edge of it. Before he’d reached his tenth birthday he went for a walk that lasted a year, which became his pattern. It wasn’t until Oliver’s mother died that Oliver discovered the true story of Ulysse among his grandmother’s remembrances, stored in a tobacco can.

  My home was at St. Norbert, and I was at the Garry fort when a message came that soldiers had reached Selkirk. They were coming to take the country. I started for home across the Assiniboine River, and when I got to the bridge I noticed that it had been punctured so the water was coming across. This had been done by enemies. This was about three o’clock in the morning. I remember I was so frightened.

  After the trouble at Red River was over, Joe and I married and later, we settled near to Aubigny on land given to us. Then my husband took sick, and we moved to Fish Creek as I had a sister there. Now the trouble started again at Batoche. It seemed that trouble was following me through my life.

  The leaders of the rebellion ordered all families into Batoche for safety. For ourselves, my husband didn’t take part in the rebellion, as he was against that. But we were at Batoche with the others, because he was so sick. The battle was on for three days, starting at 7 A.M., and leaving off at 6 P.M. The soldiers got orders to fight and take Batoche as the rebels were getting out of ammunition. When the soldiers entered, we all hid alongside the river bank. All the families and children were camped there. We could hear the leaders commanding the soldiers, and the bullets were going over our heads into the river, just like hail. Some of the tents were shot through. Once I went for water for the children and I saw something strange. So my sister and I pulled it out. Afterwards, we found out it was a cannonball.

  But my real worst experience, to me at least, was when I nearly lost my Ulysse. There was an Indian family that I used to feed before the rebellion. I was really frightened of them. When we were getting away from the fighting with our children, I had Ulysse in my arms, and Narcisse by the hand, Isidore and Marie-Ange being big enough to follow me. This same Indian woman happened to pass me, and she saw that I was in difficulties handling the children. So she grabbed Ulysse
and made signs she was going to help me. Putting the child on her back, she started off. I hadn’t looked, and when I did, she was almost a quarter of a mile ahead of me. When I got to her I grabbed my boy. I told her she was running away with him. The squaw said yes, and took out some bannock and gave a piece to him. I never saw this woman again.

  Ulysse sometimes spoke the Red River tongue Oliver had heard while growing up. Its sound was a balm that became more profound when, one by one, his friends, his brother, left him for wives and children. Oliver’s aimlessness hadn’t been expunged by his own marriage, but rather accentuated by Sara’s purposeful nest-feathering, his children always wanting to claim him.

  There was nothing on the other side of the river for him any more, except for Alice Bouchard and the memories he had of the many Sunday afternoons whiled away round a piano at the Bouchard home. Alice practising the prerequisite hour of scales and exercises, until Madame Bouchard bustled into the room in mock irritation and stilled the metronome, demanding that her daughter slide over on the bench.

  She would immediately begin playing a waltz, a polka, stopping moments later to insist that Oliver take her place, as she had done ever since coming upon him in the parlour waiting for Alice, picking out the melody of a song Alice had played earlier. He was unable to listen to music without some part of his body moving in time to it. On those Sunday afternoons Madame Bouchard sang in a wobbling vibrato to Oliver’s accompaniment, If You Knew Susie, Ain’t She Sweet, I’m Confessing That I Love You, as Alice’s sisters drifted into the room to join in. He recalled leaving those musical Sunday afternoons feeling satiated, as though he’d had more than his fill of a good hot meal.

  Oliver sometimes went wandering through Aubigny thinking he’d missed a detail of that old place—a spectre from the past might present itself, and his self, the boy he’d been for such a brief moment, would be restored. When he wound up at Alice’s house after the meeting at the school he realized that he’d sought her out. She was younger than he was, but from the beginning of his awareness of her she had seemed older. In a room filled with people, at a dance, a mass, he had only needed to be at her side to feel himself settle into his skin.

  From the time they were children they had sometimes spoken one another’s thoughts. Oliver, staring at her looped braids as she sat at the front of the classroom with the younger students, would will her to turn and acknowledge his presence. Stop daydreaming and get on with your lesson, her look told him, as though he owed her because they could read one another’s minds. Oliver would think of her suddenly and fling down the axe halfway through a chore. Leaving the yard, he’d see her hurrying along the street in search of him.

  He was fifteen when his mother died, and Alice came to him at the graveside, took his hand, and his tilted world grew steady. My mothers prepared a meal, she said.

  Afterwards, Oliver and Romeo sat on the veranda steps at the Bouchards’, smoking, listening to the give-and-take of conversation going on in the house between the three sisters and their mother as they cleared away the remains of the meal in the dining room. Oliver’s ear was tuned only to Alice’s voice, as he still felt the pressure of her mouth against his, her breasts, small and hard, against his chest. My poor dear Oliver, she’d said, coming up behind him in the hall as he was about to join Romeo outside. He turned to receive her embrace. Dear Oliver, she said again, the words a tickle of warmth against his neck. She kissed him, her mouth a brief pressure against his, and then once again, more softly, as though she’d been dissatisfied with the first attempt.

  He hadn’t anticipated the kisses, and a shiver played his body as he sat with Romeo on the veranda steps. Oliver and Alice had been startled by footsteps entering the hall, Alice’s mother coming upon them in their embrace. She was a quick-witted and humorous woman, but in this instance she was at a loss for words, unsettled by what she’d just witnessed. Then she took a deep breath and said, I want you to know that you and Romeo will always be welcome in this house. Don’t be shy.

  Oliver felt Romeo’s dark brooding, at the same time as he was imbued with the promise of Alice’s kiss, Madame Bouchard’s invitation. His eyes followed Romeo’s gaze, a team of chestnut horses and a wagon waiting in the street in front of their house while their sister and brother-in-law packed up those of their mother’s belongings they might have use for in their own house.

  Scavengers, Romeo said. He couldn’t stomach thinking about the brother-in-law arriving at the funeral in a wagon, intent on carting away the pickings afterwards. When Oliver suggested they go and oversee the packing up, Romeo snorted. What’s the point? he said, defeated before he’d set out, as always. Oliver would be grateful to find that they’d left him his bed, a table and two chairs, dishes in the cupboard, and on the top shelf a rust-bitten tobacco tin holding the scrip documents, and the newspaper clippings of his grandmother’s remembrances as told to a reporter of the Winnipeg Tribune. They’d also left the collection of animal traps, hanging in the woodshed.

  Father Carrière, who’d said the mass for their mother, came along the sidewalk towards them, and Romeo swore under his breath. He flicked a half-smoked cigarette into the grass and got up, and Oliver followed. The priest raised his hand as though to call them over. Then he seemed to change his mind, and sprinted up the steps of the church, his black cassock caught by the wind and billowing around his legs.

  Oliver hurried to keep up with Romeo, who went down Main Street and struck out along the ferry road. The sky became suddenly alive and loud with geese and Romeo stopped to watch the flock pass over, the sound striking a too plaintive chord in Oliver’s chest as he came up beside his brother. They mounted the crest of the road and saw the ferry at the landing, the operator hailing them with his half-empty sleeve. As they came near the landing, Romeo veered off from the road to walk along the riverbank and collect small stones that he sent skipping across the still water.

  You and me, we sure as hell weren’t dealt a good hand, Romeo said. Oliver was disquieted by his brother’s comment. He recalled Alice’s endearment—my dear Oliver—her mother’s promise that the Vandal boys would always be welcome. On the contrary, he thought, he’d been dealt a strong hand.

  There was a jalopy on the other side waiting to cross the river, and a hay wagon and a team of horses, but the operator didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get underway. The car doors opened and the passengers got out all at once, women, children, several men. A child scooted off down to the river’s edge, and an adult shouted for her to return. There was something similar about the look of the people, the way they moved, hesitant, as though thinking they might need permission.

  The brothers went over to the ferry; the operator was a distant cousin on their father’s side who, since returning from the war with his amputated limb, uttered no more than a few words at a time. And so Oliver was surprised when the bandy-legged and tough-looking man spoke to him. He’d heard a rumour that a butcher at Alexander Morris was looking for someone to train. You could do well there, he said.

  Yes, but my English isn’t strong, Oliver was going to say, but only nodded. Alexander Morris was farther south than he cared to be away from home. The thought of home made his stomach lurch, as though he were about to step from a bridge into the air. Before he could reply, the jalopy’s horn squawked, hooga, hooga, a sound that made Oliver smile.

  Oliver and Romeo rode across the river, and when it came time, Romeo took it upon himself to guide the car onto the ferry. On the first attempt the driver stalled the engine, and then revved it too much, and the car lurched erratically towards Romeo. Oliver feared the car wouldn’t brake in time, and held his breath as it pitched to an abrupt stop within a foot of his brother, who didn’t flinch but stood stiffly, a palm extended, his long dark hair streaming across his face in the wind.

  The men on shore laughed and shook their heads as the driver, a stocky blond man, emerged from the car with a grin and shouted something to them in German. As the engine started up, the blond man went over
to the motor shed to investigate. The children were herded all at once onto the ferry by a woman. A young girl among them would not be tugged into place, choosing instead to stand a distance from the others. She wore a hat that was too large, and hid her face. Now she took it off and gazed at the sky, her brow furrowed as though she was about to cry. She looked the way Oliver felt. Stricken. Off balance, but determined not to show it.

  Mennonites, the ferry operator muttered under his breath, having pushed aside the man peering into the motor shed, in order to exit. He pronounced the word minnanites, as most people did, his tone derisive as he gestured towards them with his half-arm, his shirt sleeve folded and fastened with pins.

  The Deetch, other people had named them. And seed-eaters, after the sacks of sunflower seeds they invariably carted around with them, shells flying from their mouths as they talked, littering the ground about their feet like sawdust. Several men in the parish of Ste. Agathe had given their lives, while others had lost their minds and limbs, fighting Germany in the Great War. Just as the ferry operator had. The fact that many Mennonites claimed the right not to go to war was a topic that raised disgust.

  And now, in the early 1920s, the government had welcomed even more of them, thousands of Deetch-speaking minnows fleeing Russia after the revolution. The people on the ferry that day were among those refugees, had joined their ilk already living on vast tracts of land the government had designated for their use. The East and West Reserves, those areas were named, situated on either side of the Red River. Rich black soil, breadbasket earth, designated for people who preferred to keep to themselves, to conduct business with their own. Among them the cowards who’d refused to take up arms in the Great War.

  Romeo and Oliver crossed the river on the ferry, Romeo standing with his legs apart and arms akimbo, staring down the broad channel. He was almost twenty years old, a slight and bony young man wearing a rumpled and mismatched suit, the wind making his eyes tear. He was seemingly oblivious to the children, to the women, who’d formed a circle and were quietly talking among themselves. He was oblivious to the anxious glances cast in his direction by one of the women, a tall person in a long navy coat. She went over to the girl who was standing apart and tugged at her arm, her motion conveying, Come away, you’re too near to the edge.