The Cast Stone (16 page)

Benji came over to the Elder's table not long after Elsie, and Rosie, still carrying Rachel, left. “I guess I'll take you up on the offer of that cot after all.”

“Anytime.”

“Well, thanks.” He wasn't sure of himself, standing half behind Ben, so that Ben had to twist around on the plastic chair to see his face. “Are you staying?”

“I think so, for awhile anyway.”

“The door isn't locked. Just help yourself to whatever you need.”

And Benji, too, found the door and the dark, but without shaking hands with anyone or going to the casket.

“That's a good looking son you've got.” Leroy still wanted to talk, didn't want to be alone just yet. “It's just too bad you missed out on his growing up years.” Leroy's voice softened at Ben's pained expression. “It's okay. You have time now. Up to you if you want it.”

“I suppose.”

The silence of the night drained conversation, took away the energy for talk and both men fell back into the quiet. This was the part of the wake that Ben remembered most, this still, quiet time in the middle of the night when only a few remained to keep the dead company until daylight, his mother only agreeing to go home and get some rest when a much younger Ben had promised, “I'll stay, Mom, you go home before you fall down.”

“Don't be falling asleep now. You keep watch.”

“I will, Mom. Promise.”

“This is the last time you'll have to look after your dad.”

“I know, Mom. I know.”

Leroy butted his last cigarette into the dregs at the bottom of the Styrofoam cup, adding it to the others. Elroy always hated his smoking. Probably didn't smoke because Leroy did. Well, maybe Leroy could quit now. He stretched his shoulders back, forced old muscles to move, stood, scraped his chair loud in the echo chamber of the school gymnasium and went to stand before the open casket. His brother, his little brother. Now he could say goodbye, now when there were only a handful of people left, Leroy and Elroy one last time and the world would change forever. Leroy would be alone for the first time in ninety-two years.

“Well little brother . . . ” He stood straight, looked down into the box at the old face and the long grey white hair fanned out on the pillow, rubbed his hand over his own short-cropped hair. “It looks like it's just me now. You're not missing much. This is a different world than we had. Maybe it's better. Maybe it's as it should be. You and me, we weren't made for this world; this world's gone crazy. Maybe it's better that you're not here to see this.” His hands held the edge of the coffin, supported his weight, his heaviness. “Gotcha with this Canadiens thing, didn't I? Got you last.” Leroy tried to laugh. It wasn't there. “Your kids were here, your grandkids, and even some great-grandkids, but I guess you know that, eh?” He looked away, around the nearly empty gymnasium, collected thoughts for a second. “Gonna miss you.” He looked back. “You know that too. It won't be long, not long little brother. You just wait. Me and you in the happy hunting grounds, and I'll show you how to hunt. Nothing left to hunt around here anymore. You must have shot the last of the big moose to get that set of antlers in your living room. But don't you worry, when I get there I'll show you a really big set of antlers.” He touched his brother's scarred, cold, hand, the one with the gold Western Canada championship ring. “When I get there, we'll be on the same team. Promise. I promise.” Leroy choked on the lump in his throat, felt the sting of tears threatening to burst. “Promise.” He leaned down and kissed his brother's forehead.

Elsie wanted to go because Benji was going. Rosie wanted to go because Elsie wanted to take Rachel with her. Give the boy a sense of his ancestry, Ben figured as he manoeuvred the boat a short distance up Witiko Creek from its mouth on Moccasin Lake. The creek ran deep and dark, its water stained with tannins. The sand bar along the south shore was longer than Ben remembered. He let the boat swing in the light current and nosed it in where the trail began, right there where the pines ran down to the water's edge.

The trail ran straight back, up a slight rise and onto the flat, three- or four-acre clearing. Its indentation from years of use ran through the red brown pine needle-covered ground. Some of them lay in clumps, blown from the boss trees of the forest that stood guard around the grey weathered cabin, shaded it from a relentless sun, broke the wind in winter, sometimes gave their life to that wind. Ben was saddened by the sight of a large pine that lay tilted, its roots torn from the earth, brown and grey across the trail that ran under it straight to the door of the cabin. He remembered that tree, remembered his father leaning his big bow saw against it, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. “That's enough for today,
Nikosis
, go for a swim or something. Can't work all the time.” And the dutiful son had gladly obeyed in the cool of the creek.

Ben wanted to share his memories with Benji, memories of two old people living quiet and close to the land. He hadn't intended to sound like a professor, but he did. “They lived here all their married lives.” Without the feeling, without attachment. “They moved here after their wedding. The story is that someone was killed at the celebration, stabbed. Mom and Dad came here to get away from the drinking. All the time they were here, alcohol was never allowed; might be why they never received many visitors.”

Rosie interrupted: “Adolphus and Eleanor Robe. People on the reserve didn't mention them much, kind of forgotten people,” as she walked around the windblown pine towards the cabin. She spread out a blanket before unsaddling Rachel from her hip, put the little girl down and lowered herself onto the hand-sewn quilt. The exact place where Mom used to sit on a blanket to do her bead work or birch bark baskets, Ben realised.

“This cabin is in pretty good shape.” Benji pushed against the solid log wall.

“It's not that old. I helped your grandfather build it not long before they both passed away. Actually, we built it twice.”

“Twice?” Benji turned to his father.

“Yes,” Ben was flooded with memories so strong that he lost his words for a second. “Yes, we built it twice. You see, the old cabin, the first cabin was right here where this one stands. It was getting pretty rough and Dad decided to build another one. I wasn't teaching during the summer so I came to help. We built another cabin just over there, and Mom and Dad lived in the old cabin while we built the new one. When we were done we moved Mom and all the furniture into the new cabin. The plan was to use the old cabin as a shed, someplace to keep Dad's traps, and sleigh, and stuff.

“But Mom didn't like the new cabin. It was in the wrong place. It was only twenty feet, but it was in the wrong place. So they lived in a tent and me and Dad tore down the old cabin, tore down the new cabin, and put it back up where the old cabin was.”

“I can understand that.” Rosie moved to keep Rachel from crawling off the blanket. “You get used to something and it's hard to change.”

“The only difference was the place. The new cabin was the exact same size and shape as the old cabin. Even the windows and door were in the same place. She just didn't like where it was, not how it was.”

“Place is important.”

“I suppose.” Ben realized for the first time that it might be, as he watched Rosie in the exact spot where his mother used to sit, sitting exactly the way she sat with her legs tucked back beside her. “At the time though, I thought she was just being old and silly. That was a lot of work for Dad and me. He was almost eighty.”

“Then it's a good thing you helped,” Rosie placated. “A little work probably didn't hurt.”

“Oh, it hurt all right,” Ben remembered as he looked back at the heavy log wall.

“Did you come here often?” Benji wanted to know.

“Every summer from when I first went to university until they passed away. I haven't been back here since.”

“Every summer?” Rosie questioned. “Never saw you on the reserve.”

“Never went there. I'd come out and stay here. Was no reason to go to the reserve.”

“So how come you didn't move here instead of building your place next to my mom?”

“This is a hard place to live. No road, no electricity. Not bad in the summer, you can come by boat, or in the winter you can come by snow machine, or dog team the way Dad used to, but it's not good in the spring and fall.”

“Why's that?” Benji came back from examining the construction of the cabin, how the logs fit together in the corners.

“Because when the lake freezes you can't use a boat, and you can't walk on it until it's thick enough. In the spring it's the same thing. The ice gets rotten and you have to wait, sometimes it takes two or three weeks. Wasn't bad when I went to school on the reserve — I got a holiday,”

“Couldn't you put a road in?” Benji was thinking construction.

“Too much muskeg, we're kind of on an island here. The lake on one side, but behind here — ” Ben waved a wide sweep toward the east — “it's all muskeg. No way to get across. Anyway it would ruin it.” He liked this place just the way it was.

Mice dirtied the floor of the cabin, dragged in litter, chewed the mattress and spread out the cotton lining. Squirrels made much more of a mess. They dropped the leftovers of their meals in piles, chewed holes through the walls, widened gaps between the logs. Birds took advantage of the squirrel holes, moved in and built their nests mudded to the pole rafters. One large nest hung from the ridgepole, the log that Ben and his father struggled to put into place. The south-facing windows were stained with years of dust and grime so that the light took on an orange hue where it fell on the floor, adding to the abandoned feel of the cabin.

“They're taking back their land.” Elsie spoke philosophically as she followed Ben inside.

“Yeah, Mom would see it that way too. But in her lifetime that floor would shine.”

Benji examined a calendar hung from a nail, February 2001. The picture was of a 1962 Oldsmobile coupe, the one that had the unique wrap-around windows, bright green and enamel white.

“Nobody's been here in awhile.” He voiced the obvious.

“It's isolated.” Ben moved to look over Benji's shoulder, looked for February 10th. The day they found his father, found him sitting under a tree only a half day's walk up the trapline. “He must have got tired,” his mother had said, and before the snow melted that spring she got tired too and they buried her beside Dad.

“This would be a great place for a still.” Benji sized up the cabin, measured its cubic feet, considered its isolation, the spread of the pines, and the solidity of its structure.

“Over my dead body.” Ben was firm.

“Oh, I don't mean for drinking.” Benji realized his gaff. “I mean ethanol, for fuel.”

“Not even ethanol.” Ben remained firm. He felt ghosts stirring, an uncomfortable stir.

“Come on, Ben.” Benji wanted to say ‘Dad', but wasn't sure how his father felt about that yet. “Think about the money you could save. That truck of yours must suck up a lot of cash in a year. Maybe even burn it in your boat.”