“In the time of the Sixth Fire, it will be evident that promise of the Fifth Fire came in a false way. Those deceived by this promise will take their children away from the teachings of the Elders. Grandsons and granddaughters will turn against the Elders. In this way, the Elders will lose their reason for living….”
FROM THE PROPHECY OF THE SEVEN FIRES
THE ELDERLY WOMAN LAY ON starched sheets in the Lake of the Woods District Hospital beneath the branches of trees she couldn’t see. Her hand was being held. Her hand was wrapped in a man’s hand, but it was not her husband’s. It did not belong to the man who’d sat in that room where the vellum books covered the walls, and the amber of the lamps was reflected in bottles of liquor. She called out to him through the tall pines that waved above the church at Pickle River, “Joshua, I have no feeling I can find beyond those miles we travelled.” There had been a great passion. But not for him. Sometimes she saw it floating behind her eyes. A boy. Theodore, he did not like to be called Ted. He preferred Theodore. He wasn’t a boy, of course, he was a young man with wide shoulders. He lost a leg at Monte Cassino, then he died. There were letters she kept in a tin, funny letters and letters of love. The boy had loved her.
A voice was speaking to her, repetitive, droning, like the voices that blared on the intercom; Doctor Kohut to emergency please Doctor Kohut emerg … “Priscilla,” the voice said, “Mother.” It would be Paul then, the boy, her only child, her son standing there in the dark where she could not see him, where so many things existed now. He had grown into a man with troubled teeth and hands the texture of bark. She felt something pressing to her. She wondered if Paul was an old man now too, her son. Had that happened to everyone? Even him? It wasn’t fair. Everyone, it had happened to everyone. That the life written by her body grew old, disappeared and became invisible — she had made a peace with that; the paper shrivelled, and became dust. That it should happen to her children, too, she thought. That was the atrocity.
She remembered there was a boy out there, her boy, who searched among the rocks and roots of the ironwood tree and wielded his fishing rod through the spring pickerel runs. He was always searching. Always wanting to know. The boy had made himself an honorary son of Ronnie Whiteloon. He was dead too then, Ronnie Whiteloon, that smiling man who arranged his children in order of size, largest to shortest, as they walked through town. Her boy Paul had played in houses tacked with newspaper, snuck into bathrooms where there were no toilets, only bathtubs filled with coal. The otters clattered over the woodpile. “Mother,” he said, I want to change my name to Weaselhead. Why would you want to do that? Because I love that name. Why do you love that name? Because it makes sense. My name does not make sense. Prescot is a foreign name. It makes no sense to me. His father had slapped his face for it. Weaselhead.
Joshua, she said, stop it, and she understood this was the last word she would speak. Joshua, she whispered, has the fire passed? Is it roaring? Do the animals still run in fear from the forest? Does your very son fear you? Does the land fear you? Is it time that we must leave our homes and rivers and go from here, Joshua? Paul? The heat was unbearable, on her eyes and forehead. The sun would not forgive them.
“Stop it,” she cried.
Paul felt the thin bones of his mother’s hand, a bare flicker of blood within it. In that moment he became aware of the giggling of Muzak that fell from the speakers, had been falling since the beginning. It came to him like a symphony rising louder until it filled his ears and eclipsed her breathing. She spoke, uttered frail words, then tried again.
“Stop it,” she said. He was sure that’s what she said.
“Priscilla?” His lips were against her ear, close enough to feel her hair, its dryness. “Mother.”
Beneath the fluorescent lights he heard the laughter of two nurses. One of them had a date. “He has his pilot’s licence,” she said. The other one responded to this with some awe. “Oh, a fly boy.” But her colleague would have nothing to do with it. “It’s never worked before. Why should it with this guy? So what he has a pilot’s licence?” This was followed by an outbreak of laughter from both of them.
Paul closed his eyes.