The Cast Stone (4 page)

“Are you going to lift your net this morning?” Rosie wanted to know how much time she had to visit.

“I pulled it out yesterday; I have enough fish for awhile.” Ben stirred a half teaspoonful of sugar into his black coffee. Rosie was going to want to know who his guest had been. Ben decided to make her work for the information and only answer direct questions, see how long it took for Rosie to hint around before she came right out and asked.

“Did you have a good sleep?”

“Very good.”

“Hmm.” Rosie did not much like coffee at the best of times, and she really did not like Ben's morning coffee. It was way too strong for her tastes. She only accepted a cupful to be polite; now she was stuck with it. She put the cup down, held it for a moment between her hands, then eased it away, slid it across the wood of the table as she talked, moved the bitter black to greater and greater distance.

“I had my children between eighteen and twenty-four, all in a rush, four kids in six years. Then they were my life for the next twenty years. Then all of a sudden I'm forty and all alone. My baby goes to live with her sister in the city and I have a new life to figure out. I'm alone and I have time to think again. And do you know what I think about for the next twenty years?”

“No.” Ben shook his head.

“I wondered what happened to the pictures.”

“What pictures?”

“The pictures of Father Lambert. What other pictures?” Rosie waited for an answer.

Ben did not have an answer; he sat back and took the time he needed. Three years he had been home. Rosie came over almost every day; she drank tea, nibbled cookies, told stories and retold stories, offered to sew buttons back on, made him moccasins and a beautiful pair of gauntlets covered with otter fur and she never asked, or talked about that summer. He had relaxed, maybe she would never ask, but now there it was; the question.

“There are no pictures, never were; I stole the camera from the school, but there was no film.”

“You bluffed him?” Her face changed, serious Rosie dissolved into everyday Rosie. “You bluffed a priest with an empty camera.” She shook her head in disbelief. “You always had that, that something.” Rosie did not have the words to describe Ben's inherent sense of absolute justice, his determination, his sense of self and place that overwhelmed less aware people.

“I'm sorry, Rosie.”

“No. No don't ever say that. If you apologize then you did something wrong and I can blame you, and I don't ever want to blame you. It wasn't you. All you did was ask me to put on my little sister's red dress and go play in front of the church. He did the rest. When you came with the camera you saved me from him. It wasn't your fault for what he done.”

“I'm sorry, Rosie, I'm sorry because I didn't think you would get there so quick. By the time I broke into the school and got the camera and got back, well . . . ”

“But you did get back, and he saw you with the camera, and he never touched me or any other kid on this reserve again. I don't blame you Ben. I'm proud of you. You took on a priest and beat him. You forced him off the reserve and now I find out the camera was empty. Well, in a way that's a good thing. Nobody will ever see my shame.”

Ambrose Whitecalf never went to university along with the others, his brothers, his classmates. Red dutifully finished grade twelve, honoured his parent's wishes, attended the graduation ceremony that was for them, not him. He didn't care. It wasn't important. It simply marked the end of an era. Graduation was the signal of freedom, freedom to go back to the land, to enjoy the earth.

Red was law-abiding. But it was his law that he abided. Red's law wasn't much different than that written in criminal codes. The principles were the same. Respect others, take care of your family, don't interfere. Red's law imposed upon him a duty to help anyone who asked. He had no desire to change the world, not even to push the Americans back across the old border. They were part of a world that had no impact on him; they didn't matter. Their rules and regulations and imposed security were meaningless in the forest.

Their economy was not Red's economy. He cut a bit of firewood for people who still burned firewood, took the bit of money they gave, sold a bit of fish and a bit of moose meat occasionally. Sometimes in good years he sold some of the rabbits he snared to people who remembered eating rabbit but were too busy trying to earn a living to take the time to go to the forest, cut a few young tender pine and scatter them around until the rabbits came to feast. He pitied and loved those people, the ones who remembered how it was, the ones who smiled at their memories as they reached for the stringy meat that would go into their soup. They paid with big, happy smiles, not caring that the price per pound, if calculated, would bring the price of rabbit above that of beef. They weren't buying meat; they were buying memories.

It was gasoline that forced Red into the economy, gasoline for the chainsaw, for the truck, for the boat to go lift the net. If Red did not have to buy gasoline, his life could be a whole lot simpler. Everything he needed for a good life was in the forest; food, heat, shelter. Gasoline was his prison, his captor.

Red was completely unsophisticated and loved it. The problems and complications of modern society did not touch him, did not enter into his analysis of any given morning. He woke, made a pot of coffee for himself and a kettle for Lorraine's tea when she got up. His day began with a prayer, usually outside, a simple “Thank you for today, Grandfather.” Then Red would look around to see what needed doing or what the day was best suited for.

He was getting good at predicting weather, watching the sky for those subtle changes, those markers that he recognized — low clouds in an arc above the eastern horizon always meant that the weather would be warming. Sky colour held meaning beyond the red sky at night, red sky in morning cliché. There were also shades of blue, variations near the sun or moon and an encyclopaedia of cloud forms.

Today, Red decided, would be a good day to stay close to home, help Lorraine with the little things around the house, knowing that by noon she would be chasing him out, sending him somewhere. “Go help Moses fix his fence.” Or, “Dianne phoned, she needs someone to look at her car. It's making a funny sound.”

Rosie sat on the heavy plank steps that led up to Ben's door. “The light is good here,” she told herself as she sewed beads to leather and created an eight-sided star for the back of a pair of gloves. The truth was that the light at her house, a hundred steps further from the lake, was as intense. But if you challenged her on it, she would argue with you and no matter what proofs you offered, you would eventually lose the argument worn down by the strength of her conviction. She would never admit to you or to anyone that she was there because she was lonely and the feeling of Ben's spirit moved around his cabin and comforted her.

A whimper from under the steps drew Rosie away from her beadwork to kneel in the grass, bend way over, and look under the heavy lumber frame. The yellow dog lay curled around six puppies tumbling with each other for a teat, all mouth and sucking, eyes closed. “You picked a good spot to have your babies.” The yellow dog raised her head at the words. “Seems everyone knows Ben will look after them.” The yellow dog licked the puppy closest to her tongue. “Thirsty work giving birth, isn't it. Bet you'd like some water.” Rosie found a bowl she was sure Ben wouldn't mind sharing. On the way out she grabbed the left-over fried fish. Sleigh dogs and fish, something about that combination just seemed natural somehow.

Rosie sat back on the steps — a fed, watered, contented mother lay in the shade somewhere beneath her — and wondered absently where Ben might have gone. To the city perhaps, more than likely the city she agreed with herself. He would not have gone north for any reason without taking his boat. She wet the thread by drawing it through her mouth to stiffen it so that it was easier to control and returned to firmly attaching the string of beads to their precise location on the leather.

Now if she were her grandmother, she would not sit here and wonder, she would fly away and find out exactly where Ben had gone and how he was making out. Rosie had never seen her grandmother, old Jeannie, do any of the things she was purported to have done. She had only scraps of conversations and whispers that told of the old woman telling her children, including Rosie's mother, “I'm going to check on your uncles on the trapline. Don't be scared. If it looks like I'm in trouble, just pass my shoes over me and I will come back.” And the old woman would go to sleep and dream and toss and turn and talk and if she became quiet, her children would pass her shoes over her and she would wake up and tell them how their uncles were doing. “Delbert killed a moose.” or “Walter fell through the ice, but his dogs helped get him out. He's okay now.”

Ben had a secret, Rosie knew. He had a secret and it had a hold of him and wouldn't let him be, it was like a limp or an ache, and it was always in the way and needed to be cared for like a sore thumb. But Ben had a big secret and it had started to bend him over with its weight. If he wanted to share it with Rosie, she would help him to carry it. She had carried the secret of the priest all her life and it hadn't crippled her; it had made her strong.

But Ben's secret was something newer, something he brought with him to the reserve, something from outside, from the white world. Probably had to do with money. Rosie looked around. The aluminum boat on the trailer parked in the shade of the large pines must have cost Ben a fair price, and the motor, well those don't come cheap, not new ones anyway, and this house. Rosie turned around and looked at the log structure behind her. He must have spent money on it. Those were new windows set in wooden frames, and the door was solid, not one of those cheap doors like the contractors put on reserve houses. Yeah, Ben had spent a fair amount on his house. It might not look like it unless you looked close. Everything was plain, simple and the best quality. And if you added in the truck, well, Ben had spent a big pile of money since he moved back.

So Ben had money, big deal. He was a retired professor after all. So why did he go to lengths to act like he didn't? Maybe he was embarrassed by it. Maybe he didn't want to embarrass her with it. It didn't matter. Funny thing about money — you put people and money together and strange things happen.

She slipped the long thin bead needle through a sequence of different coloured beads, raised the needle and shook the pretty little bulbs of glass down the thread to where her solid left thumb waited to hold them firmly in place while she sewed them onto their designated spot.

If Rosie could travel like Old Jeanie, she would go find Ben and tell him — tell him what? That she was sitting on his steps while he was away because she wanted to be where he had walked, on boards he had nailed. She was sixty-four years old and acting like she was fourteen. What would Ben want with her? She wasn't pretty. Not anymore. She wasn't one of the educated, sophisticated. She was competently literate but wasn't versed in literature. She preferred to read Stephen King and wasn't in the least interested in the William Faulkner novel that lay open on Ben's bedside table.

Something shifted in the shadow of the pines off toward Rosie's left. She watched for it with her peripheral vision rather than turn her head and search boldly. The figure moved again. It was not skulking, just moving slowly between her house and Ben's. She did not recognize the man at first, now that he was obvious and she could openly look at him. His hair was too short for the reserve where the fashion ranged from slightly longer to long. His was very close cropped. There was a familiarity about the face, as hard as it was. Somewhere beneath the mask of sternness lived someone she once knew. He came out of the shadows, walked up, and now stood in front of Rosie.

“Well, drop kick me Jesus. How you doin', Rosie?” the humour in the words did not make it to the voice so the statement sounded bizarre.