Sisters of Grass (11 page)

From the window of his room in August Jackson's cabin, Nicholas Byrne, also sleepless, was startled to see a horse coming down the hill, and on its back a girl dressed in starlight. He wondered if he was dreaming until the girl slid off the horse and he realized it was Margaret Stuart. She was wearing a nightdress, he could see, and he could also see the shape of her body through the thin fabric. Apart from paintings and the sculptures in the New York museums, he'd never seen a girl dressed in so little. The sight was otherworldly, the horse with its nostrils flaring, the girl, nearly naked, stroking its dark neck under those extraordinary stars. What a place this was, he thought, and returned to his bed, eager for the morning.

At the fete at Nicola Lake on Victoria Day, Margaret participated in the Ladies' Race and came second. After the ribbons were presented, she came to her family with her eyes shining and her cheeks flushed, the rosette of blue satin pinned to her blouse. She'd loved the excitement of running in the warm May air, past the crowds of cheering spectators, her legs feeling powerful and strong as she raced for the finish line. She wished they had thought to bring a saddle horse so she could enter the Hurdles; the team that drew their buggy were broken to saddle, but they certainly weren't jumpers.

“I feel so lucky I could even win the Cowboy Race,” she announced. In previous years, she had stood with her mother, watching everything but not willing to run or ride in the gymkhana events, always uncertain whether to enter the regular races or the Indian ones. The Quarter Mile Pony, for which the prizes were a cup for first and ten dollars for second place, or the half-mile dash, Klootchman, which rewarded the winner with ten dollars, and five for the one who came second. She wondered if she'd be challenged if she tried to enter the wrong race or simply steered to the one the organizers thought appropriate. This year, after her race, she was happy to take her sisters to greet families they knew, to picnic under a Lombardy poplar on a clean white cloth, to gather with others to watch the Nicola Polo Club, with her father on a horse brought for him from a neighbouring ranch, beat the Quilchena Club handily. The cyclists came in, one by one, from the Challenge Cup race, and the winner drank from the silver cup in great, thirsty gulps. It was a wonderful day, from the parade in the morning, which the Stuarts had watched from the porch of Tom Carrington's store, to the drive home under stars with the horses trotting alertly along the moonlit road while bats flitted under cottonwoods and coyotes yipped beyond the shoulder of hill rising from the road.

Three days after Victoria Day, Nicholas headed to the Cottonwood Ranch with one of August's children, who had agreed to ride halfway with him and direct him. He was becoming accustomed to the western style of riding, with a longer stirrup, the saddle with its high horn and cantle, the way one had to hold the reins in one hand and direct the horse by pressing them against the animal's neck. It was certainly beautiful country to ride in, and he knew now why people spoke of a big sky. He'd never seen anything like it, apart from his views of the American plains from the train, and he marvelled at the way it went on forever in every direction. You could feel your head clear as you rode under it. He also understood now why one of his Columbia classmates had often spoken longingly of the open spaces of his home state, Montana. This must have been how Peter felt, riding on his home ranch near Helena, as though anything was possible under such a sky. There was no sense of constriction, of a vista cut off by mountains or buildings. He could see mountains, yes, but beyond them as well. His feeling that he was riding on the spine of the earth was part of his intense elation as he rode toward the Cottonwood Ranch, saying farewell to Davey with the ranch in sight in the distance.

Margaret was helping her mother with the dinner preparations. Her father had been curious about Nicholas Byrne, having heard about him from other ranchers and from August, who had come over for advice on a horse a day or two after the Stuarts had returned from Kamloops. August's impression had been favourable, and he'd told William that the young man had tried to buy a pair of Mrs. Jackson's moccasins to wear because he said they made his feet feel as though they'd come home. She had smiled and refused his money, saying he was welcome to the shoes as long as he wore them with respect. William had tried to question Margaret about Nicholas, but she only blushed and said he'd see for himself. That told him something he wasn't sure he wanted to know, though seeing her at the Slavin house on the night of the concert in Kamloops told him something was developing he wasn't quite prepared for. He was so accustomed to her company, so convinced of her good sense and judgment, that he hadn't much thought of her as young or old, just Margaret. But seeing her in that rose dress with the little string of pearls around her throat, he realized that she'd become a lovely young woman. One day a child on a pony, long braids flying behind her, the next, well, this beauty. And if he noticed, he felt certain others would as well.

When Nicholas Byrne came riding down the dirt lane into the ranch yard, announced by the dogs, Margaret was waiting on the porch; she had seen the puffs of dust from the horse's hooves on the dry lane before she saw anything else. William came out of the barn, introduced himself, and led Nicholas's horse away to be unsaddled and turned out in a corral. And then Margaret greeted the young man and offered him a seat on the porch, but he told her he'd rather see the ranch buildings, if that was possible.

“I'll just introduce you to my mother and ask if she needs me for anything before dinner.”

The kitchen was at the back of the house, and Margaret wondered what Nicholas's impression was as she led him through the front room — no parlour here, just a comfortable room with big armchairs and lots of books on pine shelves made from trees on their own land, trees that William had cut and planed for the house he had built in the fourth year of his marriage. A table with a chess set on top, anticipating the next move, against a wall under a low window looking out on the garden. A hearth of stones selected from the Nicola River. A battered violin case on the floor, a needlepoint frame with the beginnings of a sampler. Some of Grandmother Jackson's baskets on shelves, one on the hearth holding kindling. She wondered if his home in New York was anything like the Slavin house in Kamloops, which was now her idea of how people in cities and towns must live. The kitchen was fragrant with roasting meat and a pie made from the last of the dried apples. Cream from the Jersey cow had been whipped and sweetened and sat waiting on the deep windowsill. Jenny Stuart wiped her hands on her apron and stepped forward to shake Nicholas's outstretched hand and welcome him to the ranch.

“It's very nice of you to let me come for dinner,” he responded. “Your mother has been so good to me, too, and your brother, taking pity on me when they saw my tent and offering me a bed, making meals for me. I hadn't expected to be treated so well, being a stranger to you all.”

“Strangers are welcome here,” Jenny replied in her low voice. “We just don't have the opportunity to meet many or to give them dinner.” She smiled at Nicholas and turned to the work table, where she was chopping the first scallions from the garden to brighten the mashed potatoes and turnips.

Margaret and Nicholas went out to the barn, where William was watering the Bonny Prince and putting fresh straw in his box stall. The stallion came to the half-door of his stall and allowed them to pat his neck and admire him. Then they walked up the spacious middle aisle of the barn, William explaining about the bawling cow in one stall, a lame horse in another. Nicholas's horse loudly rattled his bucket of oats. The smell of dry hay was sweet, and the midday sunlight shone in shafts through the open door and windows, illuminating the dust motes that hung in the air like gilded insects. Barn swallows were building their nests on the high beams, flying in from the creek with pellets of mud, plucking straw from the unused stalls. One flew back and forth from the coyote skull over the harness room door, tucking mud and straw into the fractured cheek. The two men and the girl walked out into the yard, a few horses in the home corrals watching with mild curiosity, Daisy coming to the fence when she saw Margaret with the men. Nicholas asked about the growing season, the weather, the beef market. “We take our cattle to Kamloops now, it used to be Fort Hope, over the Coquihalla Pass, and that was a journey, I tell you, having done it myself the first year I had cattle to ship. But soon there'll be a rail line all the way to Nicola Lake from Spences Bridge, they hope to extend it as far as Coutlee by this summer, Nicola itself by next spring. We'll be able to ship the cattle much more efficiently, not so much weight loss and loss of condition as there is now.” When the dinner bell rang, the two men were talking easily together, and Margaret ran ahead to wash and to make sure the table was ready.

When they all took their places, Jane and Mary seated on either side of Nicholas, Margaret thought how nice the room looked in the May light. The best tablecloth dressed the table, a white damask edged with Honiton lace, a gift from Aunt Elizabeth one Christmas. There was a fine rib roast, bowls of the last of the winter vegetables mashed with butter and flecked with spring onion, cut glass dishes of serviceberry relish and green tomato pickle, a little pot of shredded horseradish mellowed with thick cream, and jugs of icy spring water and fresh milk. A basket of coiled cedar root was filled with biscuits covered with a linen cloth. In the middle of the table, a blue willow vase held the first sweet peas of the year from the vines trained on netting against the eastern wall of the house.

“Ah, this looks good, Jenny, my love.” William stood at the end of the table, carving thick slices of beef, the ones close to the middle of the joint nicely pink in their centres. Margaret took the platter of meat around the table, helping each person to the slice he or she chose. Her mother served vegetables and gravy, and Jane took the bowls of condiments to those who asked for them. William said a brief grace, and everyone began to eat. For the first part of the meal there was little conversation. But as first servings disappeared and those wanting seconds were helped to meat or vegetables or another high golden biscuit, William began to ask Nicholas about his work.

“Well, I understand that you know Mr. Teit, sir. You know then, of course, that he has published several monographs on the Indian people here in the Nicola Valley as well as on the tribes at Lillooet and some others. I've been studying under Dr. Franz Boas at Columbia University, and he is a great admirer of Mr. Teit's work. In fact, he commissioned much of the research that Mr. Teit has undertaken. I'm working on my master's degree, and Dr. Boas suggested that I should translate the monograph on the Thompson Indians into French, because there is great interest in this material in Europe. I began the work this winter, and I was enchanted, I suppose you could say, by the descriptions of the Thompson people and their lives. I wanted to see it all for myself though I know that much of what Teit describes — the religious ceremonies and the hunting and fishing rituals, for instance — is no longer the usual practise. And I've been trying to visit each village, from the small ones below Lytton to Slaz, near the Cornwall ranch, to Quilchena, which I gather is the last real Thompson village before the Okanagans begin. Though Mr. Teit told me that Spahomin is as much Thompson as Okanagan, and I've been hearing both languages about equally. He felt I should meet Mrs. Stuart's mother to see the finest baskets around and to talk to her about her knowledge of medicines and plants.”

“You are certainly right to do that. Jenny's mother, of all the elders at Spahomin, has an amazing memory, and, more than that, she continues many of the traditional ways and knows why they're important.”

“Yes, she's a wonderful woman. I've been talking to her about baskets, and she's given me a wealth of information. She even has me making a little coiled basket though I'm all thumbs. But she says the only way to really know is to do. So I'm doing, or trying at least!”

Margaret smiled. When her grandmother had begun to teach her to make baskets, she, too, had five thumbs on each hand. She cried when the split root refused to coil evenly, and her first imbrications were untidy and irregular. Now she could make a passable basket, but nothing like what her grandmother could do with her eyes closed. And often it seemed as if that was how she was making them, because she could coil perfectly without even looking at the emerging basket on her lap, her hands and fingers working as though of their own accord. Fly patterns, arrows, nets . . . she would reach for strands of bitter cherry, pale grasses, and the design would emerge from the surface of the basket.

After dinner, Margaret cleared the table and drew a jug of hot water from the reservoir on the stove to add to the cold water she had pumped into the sink. She began to wash the dishes and was startled to hear Nicholas ask where he might find a tea towel to begin the drying.

“Oh, you don't have to help. You're a guest! Why don't you sit on the porch in the shade?”

“I'd like to help,” he answered. “I'm perfectly capable of drying dishes, and it's nice to be in this kitchen. Anyway, I have a motive. If I help, you'll be finished that much quicker, and I'd hoped you could ride part way back with me. I noticed some unusual pink flowers, well, maybe they're very ordinary, but I've never seen them before. Anyway, they're blooming by the road about a mile from here, and I know you'll be able to tell me what they are.”

He stacked the dried dishes on the worktable, and Margaret put them away after she'd finished washing the pots and scalding the dishcloth. She could smell him there by the sink, a nice smell, like her father after a bath — some sort of soap, and damp hair. When his arm brushed hers, a thin flame of lightning ran up her spine and spread out along her shoulder blades. When she tried to speak after that, her words were thick in her mouth. She wondered if he could tell. Did she want to accompany him part way home? She nodded a wordless yes.