The Forest Lover (36 page)

They looked at each other, wondering, and walked out to the cliff edge where they could see the beach. A lone figure danced around a fire, swirling, lunging erratically, stumbling over a crippled foot, beating on a drum. Her drum. His now. All he needed was an eagle feather, but he had given it to her.

“A white man. What do you think he's doing?” Jessica asked. “Making fun of Indians?”

“No. Making believe. He's the one who loves my paintings.”

Sobered, Emily took Jessica's arm and led her away. Jessica looked at her quizzically.

“Look at those great boughs swing,” Emily said to change the subject. “The wind makes everything alive. Look at those green and blue shadows dancing under the trees, the way light and dark chase each other harum-scarum. Without movement a subject is dead. Just look!” She squeezed Jessica's arm.

Jessica squinted in a cunning way. “How do you paint wind?”

“Ah! By making the trees go whiz-bang and whoop it up. By painting in thick, vigorous swirls.” She traced curves in the air with her arm. “Wind connects everything in one satisfying whoosh.”

A slow, shrewd smile crept over Jessica's face. “You'll get back to work. I know it. I can go home without worrying now.”

Emily was sprinkling bread crumbs for a pair of doves that had taken residence in her front yard when Harold came down the sidewalk in his awkward, uneven gait, shaking a small brown bag.

“Hello, Harold. Listen.” She pointed to the doves. “I'm joy-crazed with their mellow cooing.”

“I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing,”
he said.

“That sounds familiar.”

“Your book. Grass of Leaves.” He grinned his delight at surprising her. “A poem called ‘Walt Whitman, an American.' ” He shook the bag again. “Seeds for the garden. Garden for the seeds.”

In baggy pants and scuffed shoes, his blond cowlick sticking up, he seemed a boy still. They went into the back yard.

She'd been watching spring approach tentatively, a few leaves unfurling here, a pale patch of sun there, as if afraid of giving false cheer. Eventually the plants couldn't help it, and tried their best to make up for other shortcomings in the world. Brilliant lime green shoots made an exuberant fringe along the fence.

“Look at those wild yellow lilies shouting huzzah at just being alive.”

He did a little wobbly dance mimicking their movement in the breeze and careening over his turned-in foot. Being with him made the world a shade more innocent, like the doves. She felt his contentment, and hers, on their hands and knees together loosening the soil. Every so often he crawled over to Billy lying under the maple, and petted him.

“That's good. He appreciates that,” she said.

She dug holes with her finger, Harold dropped in the seeds, she covered them up. “Now the land will give comfort,” she said.

He looked at her with suffering eyes. The defeated slope of his shoulders bore a consuming weight. “Illahee,” he breathed.

“If there's anything I believe, Harold, it's that everything can grow. Nothing can kill the force that splits rocks to let a tiny seedling through.”

He patted the ground, barely touching it. “The seeds need water.”

She unfolded herself to get up at the same moment he did. He lurched in her direction, slamming into her shoulder and knocking her off balance. They both fell, sprawled on the ground in a tangle.

“I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry,” he said.

“Oof.” She righted herself. “It's all right. I lose my balance too, lots of times.”

“You do?”

“Does your foot pain you?”

He just grunted.

“Your ankle?”

He puckered up his lips to one side. If that meant yes, what could possess him to dance on it?

“How did it happen?”

“My father sent his snake spirit out to trip me.”

“Tell me really.”

He hung his head. “I fell into a deer trap and snapped my ankle. There was no doctor to fix it.”

“How long ago?”

He shrugged. “I was only a boy. In Kispiox.”

“Didn't your father take you somewhere? To Fort Rupert?”

He shook his head. “How come you lose your balance?”

It was only fair for him to ask.

“I was in a carriage accident. A razor-happy London surgeon decided my big toe had to be amputated.”

She took off her shoe and wiggled her other four toes in her stocking. Looking as though he were about to cry, he cupped his toes in both hands and rocked.

“When we don't have something, we have to compensate, that's all. We have to find our balance in other ways.”

“I'm sorry for you.”

“What about your forehead?” she asked as delicately as she could.

He worked the fingers of both hands into the earth as if to anchor himself, and slowly, barely, he shook his head.

• • •

She'd been up with Billy all night brushing him gently and reminding him of all the villages they'd seen together, of the feel of moss at
Tanu, the smell of the grave house at Kitwancool. His eyes followed her movements until a moth distracted him. Even with her help, Billy had been unable to get up the ladder stairs to the attic bedroom, so she had stayed downstairs in the studio, telling him that she loved him, telling herself that she could manage this. Together they watched the black square of the window lighten to gray.

It was time. Past time. She'd wanted him to have a full summer, but now, the end of June was all she dared.

She couldn't let a veterinarian do it. Impossible to find one on Sunday. It wouldn't be fair to ask Harold. Horror clamped her like jaws. She'd have to do it herself.

The Almighty was testing her.
Let's just see how strong you are,
He said to Himself with a smirk. Of course to Himself. That's one thing she could grasp about God—His aloneness.

She took her handbag and cut through the neighbors' back yards, crossed the lane, passed Alice's schoolhouse and went in the back door of her sisters' house. Upstairs, she opened Father's bureau drawer. Even now, between his handkerchiefs, its blue-black barrel lay. Next to it, a box of cartridges. She took them both.

“What in God's name are you doing?”

She spun around to see Lizzie half dressed for church, her face white with shock. Emily shoved the gun in her handbag.

“It's Billy. Not another day. I have to.”

“You can't be serious.”

“An awful night. I'm taking him to the woods in the pram.”

“And then what?”

Then what? She didn't know.

“Why don't you take him to that Indian's husband?”

“Jimmy Frank! Of course!”

If he'd be there. She hadn't seen Sophie for over a year.

“How'll you get the pram up the steps on the ferry?”

“Drag it, push it, stay below deck, I don't know.” If she hurried, she could take the nine o'clock and come home on the overnight run.

“I'll help. I'll go with you.”

“No. I'm going to give him mutton for breakfast. You can help me get him downstairs in a little while.”

Going back through the yards, she hated herself for waiting so
long. The stairs down to the back yard would be excruciating for him. He ate. She was glad of that. When she lifted his rear to help him up, his back legs quivered and collapsed. She waited for Lizzie, who lifted his shoulders while she lifted his hips, and they got him downstairs. Emily brought the pram alongside him. “Backward, so his head's looking out,” she said. Billy went limp, as if accommodating them, but his front leg caught the handle which started the pram rolling so they had to chase it, carrying him. It should have been funny, but it wasn't.

With a compassionate, worried smile, Lizzie touched Emily's arm. “The Lord leadeth you beside still waters.”

“Thank you.” For once she envied Lizzie's faith.

Alice rushed into the yard out of breath. “I wasn't dressed when Lizzie told me. I was hoping you hadn't left yet.”

She slowed when she came to the pram, buried her face in Billy's neck, and may have cried a little, softly, into his long hair. She straightened up.

“He's going to look up at you with that sad, knowing look all the way there. Do you want me to go with you?”

“No, Alice. You'll miss church.”

“I'm going with you! Let me get my handbag.”

“No. I'll be all right. Thank you both.”

• • •

Billy revived a little on the ferry, smelling the sea and opening his mouth to gobble the wind. By the second ferry, he seemed to know he was going to the reserve where there'd be more smells. As a child squirming in church, she'd watched colors from the stained-glass window bathe the floor and pews in rainbow magic. She'd thought heaven must be like that, just swimming in colored light. For Billy, heaven must be swimming in smells—dead fish, pines, cedars, skunk cabbage, seaweed, and people.

She stopped the carriage in front of Sophie's open door.

“Ooh, Em'ly! You came again!” Sophie sang out from the doorway. “I prayed you don't forget me.”

“Never think it for an instant.”

The twins stepped outside. “See? My babies. Emmie”—Sophie touched her shoulder—“and Molly. Four years old.”

Emily crouched to speak to each one. Molly was smaller. Emmie's eyes were still crossed. Would that make things blurry? Painterly? When she rose, she saw a quality of weariness in Sophie's face. Furrows from the corners of her mouth were forming, and shadows darkened the skin under her eyes.

Sophie looked at the pram in confusion. A few steps forward and she saw Billy. “Oh, so sad for you, Em'ly. So sad.” She petted him on the head. “Poor Billy dog.” Her face tightened into sorrow lines, but her fingers stroked the maroon fabric of the pram and lingered on the handle.

“Is Jimmy here?” Emily asked.

“No. He'll be back by and by. He went to see Samuel Dan's new gas boat.”

“I was worried he'd be working.”

“He don't work so much now, only small jobs on the dock.”

Emily glanced toward Billy. “Do you think Jimmy would?”

Sophie nodded. “I'll ask Mrs. Johnson to tell him come to the meadow when he walks by. It's pretty there now, all flowers. Billy will like it.”

Emily let the girls wheel the carriage uphill on the walk leading away from the sea. At the end of the planks, the wheels stuck in the soft soil. Carefully, Emily tipped the pram sideways onto the meadow and Billy edged his way out. His nose drew him onward in the swirl of summer scents, but his hind end dragged across the meadow grasses. Eventually he gave up and lay panting.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, Emily thought. In her own way, Lizzie had given her something.

Violet blue camas blossoms speckled the meadow, offering comfort. Emily threaded some through Billy's coat behind his left ear. The twins giggled and skipped off to gather more, not knowing it was done in sadness. Molly made a flower chain and looped it around Billy's neck. Emmie threaded the stems through the shaggy hair at his rump so the clump of blossoms looked like a pompon. Emily couldn't decide whether it was an annoyance to Billy, or whether it evoked an ancient sacred rite. Since he had let the girls do it, she thought it must be all right with him.

“Why did you bring him all the way here to Frank?”

“He likes Billy.” She scratched Billy under his chin, his favorite spot. “And he knows about dying.”

“A dog for a few years is better than no dog at all.”

Emily managed a nod.

“I have enough money now for Tommy's gravestone. The grave man is making it with a cross carved on it. Very Christian. Next is Annie Marie so I keep to making baskets.”

A good friend would encourage a woman who had that much need, like Jessica encouraged her. But what if the friend thought the endeavor was futile or wrong-headed?

“That's good, Sophie.”

“They hard to sell these days. The war probably. It's awful. I feel sorry for the women here their sons are gone to it. Margaret Dan's brother is in France. She waits to hear.”

“Waiting. That's all we do.”

“You don't come to paint at the reserve anymore.”

“I'd like to. Not today, though.”

“You painted all the totem poles?”

“No. Some I haven't even seen.”

“You quit?” Sophie's voice rose sharply. “Fat men in Victoria don't like them either? Then come live here. Here you learn not to give up.”

Sophie's disgust entered her like a hot poker. Jessica's she could take, but Sophie was harder, when one reason she'd started the project in the first place was for Sophie. Or so she'd told herself at the time.