The Forest Lover

by Susan Vreeland

  The number of her pregnancies sprang into reality. Sophie must have had the twins when she was only a girl herself.

  “Why aren’t they in here?”

  Sophie chewed on the pad of her thumb. “Not baptized. Died too quick.”

  Emily felt herself drawn into Sophie’s pooled eyes.

  “Now I show you Maisie.” Sophie brightened, as though . . . as though what? Maisie meant more? The babies outside the fence weren’t as important? Or was she trying to ward off pity? Sophie turned slowly, lifting her skirt away from the thorny berry bush.

  Emily turned too, and saw that the Ancestor figure and the large cross faced each other across the fence, one artful and expressive, the other plain and flat. She could not detect any difference in the veneration Sophie showed for both of them. Emily read some inscriptions. Mary Chepxim 1893–1897. Matthew Chepxim 1896–1902, drowned in river. Jack Henry, loved, 1881–1889. Marcus Thom 1901 only.

  “So many are children. How could that be?”

  Sophie moved only her eyes, giving Emily a scornful look. “You don’t know much. No.”

  Emily bristled for an instant, about to retort. She felt Sophie wanting her to understand. Smallpox. Measles. Influenza. Were they always more deadly for Indian children? Apparently birth was never a guarantee of life. It was true. She didn’t know much.

  Sophie stopped at a gray humpbacked stone bearing the words, In Loving Memory Maisie Frank 1903–1905.

  Those were white man’s words. Had she gone to a cemetery in Vancouver to learn them?

  “She came too soon after Annie Marie. Good sisters but one died. It’s good to grow up with a sister. Share things. That makes good sisters.”

  “Do you have sisters, Sophie?”

  “No. Only brothers. In Squamish. You?”

  “Yes. Four. Not much sharing, though.”

  Sophie squinted at her curiously, as though what Emily said were impossible. “Too bad.”

  Maybe it wasn’t bewilderment in Sophie’s look, but judgment.

  She watched Sophie stroke the curve of the headstone lovingly. She’d probably done it hundreds of times, and was as devoted to those graves as she was to her living children.

  “That’s a fine marker, Sophie.”

  “The grave man made it cheap for me. He said maybe I will bring him more dead babies by and by so he made it cheap.”

  “No!”

  Sophie tipped her head to the side as if to say, Who’s to know?

  Emily checked to see if Annie Marie heard. What effect did Sophie’s coming here have on her children? At least it would let them know how much their mother continued to love each one. Annie Marie sat in the weeds a ways off, absorbed by twisting grasses together to make a basket. Her round face tipped down like a copper moon and the sunlight shimmered some strands of auburn hair. Her legs stuck out akimbo from under her print skirt spread like a fan. Maybe someday Sophie would let her paint Annie Marie, but for now, it was the Ancestor she wanted.

  Sophie’s eyes were drawn upward to the trees. She touched Tommy on the shoulder, glanced at Emily, and slowly tilted her head back. Emily looked up in time to see an eagle soar over the graveyard in a big arc, gain height, and swoop down to land with utter precision on a high jagged branch.

  “Tremendous. The power of his wings,” Emily said.

  “It mean something when you see one.”

  “What?”

  “Different things to different people.” She turned from Emily and smiled lovingly at Tommy. “You sleepy now? Rest.” She indicated a sunny patch of grass alongside Ancestor. Tommy stepped through the gap in the fence, and curled onto his side next to the figure.

  “It’s a perfect picture. Would it be all right if I painted that figure?”

  “Ancestor would make a good picture.”

  “And with Tommy there?”

  Sophie’s eyes opened wider and her lips formed an O before they sprang into a proud smile. “Yes, I share him with you.”

  They approached the Ancestor, and Emily began by sketching with charcoal to get it bold enough for the stark figure. Annie Marie crept up behind her to watch. Emily liked her small, quiet presence. She did two sketches from different angles, and then two watercolors. She showed them to Sophie. When Sophie whooshed air out of pursed lips, Emily felt happiness bubble up her throat.

  “Now Ancestor will not forget him,” Sophie said.

  • • •

  At the little two-room house Sophie made tea. “Juniper berry. Good for . . .” Sophie patted her hands over her belly. She poured the tea into a chipped china teacup. Emily held it up to examine it. Queen Victoria’s insignia was stamped on the side.

  “She was my Queen too,” Sophie said, seeing her surprise.

  “Yes, I . . . Yes. We share her.”

  Sophie nodded definitively.

  The tea would take some getting used to.

  Tommy played, wistful and sneezing on his blanket at her feet. Emily reached into her pocket for her handkerchief and offered it to him. He raised his face to her. “Blow,” she said softly, and it gave her pleasure when he did.

  He climbed onto the settee next to her. She lifted her arm and he nestled against her, leaning his head against her bosom.

  “You fit me,” he said.

  She smiled and sat still so the moment would last. Out the open door, she watched Annie Marie squatting near the salal bush with her knees wide apart. She patted the dirt smooth, picked out stones, and began to draw with a stick. When she was dissatisfied, she rubbed it flat and started again, concentrating, hope freshening her face each time. When Tommy moved away, Emily picked one of the watercolor studies of him with the Ancestor and offered it to Sophie.

  Sophie’s hands shot up to cover her mouth. Her head turned from side to side.

  “Yes, Sophie. It’s for you.”

  Slowly, Sophie lowered her hands to reveal a proud, high-cheeked smile, her eyebrows arching, even her ears lifting. She made a small, careful hole in the paper with the sharpened tip of a reed and hung it on a nail opposite the Virgin Mary.

  6: Muskrat

  The fur trader’s wooden boats were as ticklesome as she remembered them. From where she stood on the bluff above the cove, the red pilot’s cabin on the larger boat looked much too tall and narrow. The crooked stovepipe had so many angles it didn’t know where it wanted to go. And to have it topped with a tilted tin coolie hat! That stern pole had no purpose other than hoisting aloft a French flag and a foxtail. The boat gazed back at her through its sleepy animal eye, a faded black circle painted on its prow surrounded by the same almond shape as the carved saint’s eye in Sophie’s church, painted in red and black. As for the skiff tied alongside, it was a creature, really, not a boat at all. Its bow had sprouted red whiskers and an impressive set of white pointy teeth stretching back half its length, and near its stern, red flippers.

  Even the man’s tent had character—taller on one side than the other, patched in places, foxtails hanging from the tent poles, and a furry little head attached to the tent peak. Two pairs of long johns hanging from driftwood drying racks flapped in the breeze like nervous specters frantic to find their bodies. It would be a dilly of a painting. “Oui, mesdemoiselles,” she said and wagged her head. If she were going to get any decent sketches for a painting later, it wouldn’t be the next day, when she had to teach the butterflies. She walked part way down the incline to a ledge above the skunk cabbage muskeg and set up her canvas stool.

  Midway into a sketch, she heard clamoring from the larger boat. “Mon Dieu! Porquoi tu me tourmentes?”—the words uttered with the vehemence of an oath. The man flung two skin bags into the skiff, lowered himself into it, and rowed ashore. He carried them to the creek that ran out of the woods, filled them with water, and was walking back toward the tent when he saw her. “Attention, mademoiselle! You’re going to slide down that hill and land in the muck.”

  “What kind of a boat is the big one?”

  “She’s une bateau
sauvage.”

  “She? What does she do?”

  “Fight. Always she wants to go one way, I want to go the other.”

  “Why do you paint your boats?”

  “To beat back the dark wilderness with something light.”

  He set his water bags on the ground and came over to the opposite side of the narrow bog. His cheeks above his beard were burnished by wind and sun. His thin nose and small ears gave him a refined look in spite of his beard and tousled brown curls. He wore buckskin trousers and shirt—a man out of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leather-stocking Tales. As a girl, she’d reread them until the pages were soft as tissue paper.

  He scowled in a playful way that wrinkled the skin around his eyes. “You draw that boat, mademoiselle, and she’ll put a curse on you.”

  Emily laughed. “What is it called?”

  “La Renarde Rouge. She’s a vixen.”

  “Where do you go in it?”

  “As far north as she decides to take me.”

  “Alone?”

  “Alone.”

  “To Alaska?”

  “Sometimes. Or up rivers. Wherever they’ll trade for furs.”

  “What is it like in the north?”

  “Wild. Forests so thick they can’t be logged.” He threw his arms wide. “Vast territory. Weeks to get anywhere. Tout le temps, rain. Rain like waterfalls. Always branches dripping on you. Make you crazy.” He made a funny face, upper lip going one way, lower lip the other way.

  “What else?”

  “What do you want? Glaciers crashing into the sea? Birds that shriek like demons or grumble like old men? Oui, that too.” His eyes opened wide and his voice became throaty. “It’s wilderness so formidable it can turn you inside out and leave your raw flesh quivering.” He made his hands tremble.

  Her mind reeled with painting subjects. “Sounds like one glorious adventure.”

  “What? Are you a child? It is merely mercantile.” His words were clipped.

  “Are there bighouses?”

  “Villages of them, some painted to look like animals.” He waved his arms upward. “And poles stacked with queer creatures.”

  “Totem poles?”

  “And potlatches.”

  “What are they really?”

  “Won’t tell you. Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Secret. You want me to shout it up the hill at you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can’t. You have to come here, to my camp.”

  He turned and got into his skiff and rowed out of the cove. Was that it? He was going to leave her wondering?

  Well, she was here to draw, so she drew, one sketch after another, different distances, different angles. Bad, happy drawings, done recklessly. Her charcoal broke. No matter. She ripped off a page to start another sketch. Wind whipped it out of her hand and blew it onto the beach. She started another, and another, filling her drawing tablet.

  • • •

  At home, a letter was sticking out of the mail slot. She ripped it open.

  Dear Miss Carr,

  At a meeting of our board, we have decided that your teaching is inadequate for our purposes and must inform you that we shall no longer need your services.

  Mrs. Priscilla Hamilton, President

  Vancouver Ladies’ Art Club

  “What!” She stormed across the room, unable to believe the words in front of her. “Inadequate! Pish! What do they know?” she told Joseph. “They’re beastly and ignorant. They have prehistoric ideas about art. I’d rather starve than teach them.”

  “I’d rather starve,” Joseph mimicked, saying it twice.

  “Good thing, because if I go, you go.”

  She slammed the teakettle onto the stove. Jessica was right. They weren’t serious about art. They only wanted to paint flowers and themselves. Flamingo-hatted pretenders. She rolled a cigarette from her tobacco tin, lit it, then touched the match to the letter and watched the blackening edge of the paper advance toward Priscilla’s graceless signature.

  What would she do? She’d earned enough for only a few more months. Going home was unthinkable. She’d just begun to establish herself here. Jessica was here. Her new friend, Sophie, was here. The reserve was here. Possibility was here. The city was growing. Every month there were new houses of lumber barons to fill with paintings. But her trust fund wouldn’t last forever.

  She surveyed her recent work. Were they any good, or did she only like them because of the associations? Art couldn’t just be personal. Her old flop fears crawled up her spine. The Ancestor was a strong composition, though Tommy under it might be too precious. She’d try it without him. She wanted to draw Annie Marie too, sometime. Annie, so curious when she watched her from behind. She probably had never seen anyone draw before. The Ladies’ Art Club prima donnas never watched her draw. Annie watched, and then drew in the dirt. It was natural that children imitated what they liked in adults.

  She rolled and lit another cigarette, and discovered the first one still burning in the ashtray. She pushed it aside and wrote out an advertisement: Emily Carr, Classes in Drawing and Painting, Children Only. 570 Granville Street. First class free. She’d never teach adults again. Ingrates. But children, that was a different kettle of fish. Jessica would enroll her daughters, and they had friends. She might even have a ripping good time of it.

  • • •

  At the top of the incline above the cove, Emily dug her fingers into the shaggy black and white coat of the dog’s neck. He’d behaved himself well coming here, their first walk together. His lumbering gait had made her take long strides, swing her arms, breathe deep, feel plucky.

  She saw a long plank placed across the muskeg, and on the far end, the drawing that had blown away on her previous visit, weighted on four corners with stones. “Besides you, pooch, that plank’s the best thing that’s happened today.”

  She stepped carefully down the slope, the dog close to her on a leash, and crossed the muskeg on the plank, squeezing her toes to keep her balance, and urging him across.

  “Good boy!” She chucked him under the chin. “You’ll be good with the children, won’t you? You’ll keep them together on our drawing outings just like they were sheep.”

  With his mauve tongue on the back of her hand, he seemed to promise that he would. He was a business necessity, she’d tell Dede in case she rapped her knuckles with the bank book.

  She picked up the drawing. It wasn’t so bad after all.

  “Mademoiselle!” The man smiled as he came out of his tent.

  “Emily. My name is Emily.”

  “Une dame courageuse to climb down that steep hill.” He waved a rag in a flourish and executed a low bow. “Claude Serreau, fur trader. One of the last, and best. From Poitiers, where all the good ones came from. You may call me Claude du Bois, considering where I live.” His lips poked out of his beard in a funny grin and he gesticulated toward the woods behind his camp. “You came to draw again?”

  “Yes, and to find out what a potlatch is.”

  “Sh.” He put his finger to his lips and looked around at the trees. “The woods can hear.” He raised his bushy eyebrows in mock fear.

  Amusing to see a rugged outdoorsman act so queerly.

  “Where are the ladies you promised?”

  “They’ll never come.”

  “Phuff? Disappeared into thin air?”

  “Transformed into an old English sheep dog. His name’s Billy. I just bought him. I went into a pet store for a goldfish. Came out with him.”

  “Mon Dieu. He looks like a rug. Any eyes?” Claude lifted the shaggy hair on Billy’s head. “Ah, bon. Les voilà. What? No tail? What’s he good for?”

  For filling her emptiness, she thought. “For loving,” she said.

  His mouth dropped. “What? You choose a dog instead of a man?”

  “Dogs don’t go off in rowboats when you’re talking to them.”

  “I went to the sawmill to get a plank for you to come across the bo
g, but when I came back you were gone!”

  “I—I didn’t know.”

  “So, now I tell you about the potlatches.”

  He drew her toward the opening of the tent, his fingers pressing her wrist. He hummed a tune as he built a fire. She gazed at the back of his creased neck.

  He laid out a blanket of pelts, burnished brown and creamy fur. “Sea otter. Almost hunted out now. Very rare.”

  Billy sniffed them. She pulled him away and tied his leash to a tree out of range. He seemed content to take a snooze. Sprawled on the ground, he did look rather rug-like. She opened her campstool to sit near the pelts.

  “Non, non.” He gestured, openhanded, toward the pelts. “For you. Not for anybody else. Even me.” He arranged thick, sleek beaver pelts at the opening to his tent. “The big fur trade is over, but there’s still some fine pieces if you know where to find them.” He swept his hand over the fur and invited her to do the same. She bent down at the tent opening to touch them.

  “Oh, my! Something in me loves to feel the liveness in things like grass and moss and feathers and fur.”

  He brought out more. “Feel these. Muskrat and mink.”

  His brown eyes fixed on her as she stroked the fur. She could dig down with her fingers like roots in the mink, or just thread them through the longer filaments. The sensation melted her. He piled them at the entrance to the tent to make a backrest. She nestled herself into them.

  “Ah, bon. C’est bien? Now the fire crackles. No one can hear us. Now I tell you. Potlatches. Grandes fêtes lasting days. One chief invites other villages to witness the raising of a pole. He gives away hundreds of things. Dried salmon, Hudson’s Bay blankets, basins, tools, English dishes.” He waved his arms in circles outward. “Cloth, oil, sacks of grain, sugar. Even sometimes a sewing machine or a canoe.”

  “Why?”

  “To show that he can afford to. To shame the other chiefs who did not give as much at their potlatches. Good business for me, oui?”

  “Where do they get these t00ls and English dishes?”