As he swung the saddle blanket up and in, the rear board of the wagon jiggled then toppled to the ground. The board was split lengthwise and brittle with age. The stumpy man stared down at it. A long seam of cracking went through the bolt holes of the plank. This would slow the man’s departure. He mumbled his peevishness and shuffled his way into the barn.
Tethered to a post, the old mule heard the sounds of rummaging and blasphemies. Wood clunking against wood, metal on metal. When the man emerged, he brought an armload of boards of varying lengths. He weaved like a child balancing too many cups and saucers. One after the other, the young man tested the slats into the holding grooves of the wagon. When a slat proved too short, he would flip it over and try it anew, believing that flipping a thing over could make it alter in its physical properties. Often, he mishandled the boards and dropped them on or near his feet. When a splinter stabbed the skin of his palm, the rancher leaped and winced.
“Shit patties! Mm! Chuckleheaded…”
He massaged the small wound and brought it near his face for inspection. The idea of donning gloves came and went. The mule, unimpressed with the spectacle playing out beside him, searched the earth for greenery to latch on to.
Running short of boards, the man—called Ott since he was a wee tyke, growing his first teeth and running barefooted to the river for water—decided it would be quicker to re-employ the original plank, which was the only one of proper size. He could secure the plank with cordage. This fix would be quicker than cutting a new board and drilling new holes. Locating the worn piece, he set himself to fastening it with buckskin rope.
“There ye be,” he said, wiping his brow and hitching up his trousers. “That oughtta hold.”
The rancher loaded the pickaxe and the fire irons. Next to the tinder box, he placed a woolen blanket he would need in the nights. When he thought he’d gotten what provisions and supplies were necessary, he hitched the wagon to the mule and leaned his head against the toe board, which was morning frosted. The sack of a hat which the man wore slid back when he did so, showing a greasy-haired scalp. Ott kept his eyes down, aimed squarely on his badly scuffed boots. He did not move. A gloomy statue was he, miles removed from any other settler. Alone on the Great Plains. A half minute elapsed and the mule waited for instruction. When the statue became a living breathing human again, it fitted its hat better on its brow. When ready, it mounted the seat of the old wagon and took up the reins. They began.
The land was firm with what remained of winter’s freeze. Scattered banks of hard-packed snow clung to the bases of the spruce and the fir, where spruce and fir could be found, though daily the rich soil and wild grasses were revealing themselves further. The timothy and the sedge were awakening. The bravest of the gophers showed their heads, coming back to life.
One of these critters poked its dark eyes precociously from a burrow. It scanned the undulating country, the patches of tufted hairgrass. The gopher’s grey fur was sleek. Its sheen could be glimpsed beneath the muted sun. Down its ball of a crown would dip, then up again in a sort of wary soldiering. As if he alone had been appointed to take stock of the region and report back to the clan—the clan which awaited him inside the dry confines of underground chambers. From the dirt trail came the sounds of heavy steps and a squeaky wagon. The watchdog studied the wagon’s bumpy progress.
The variable breezes gave the creature an indication of the temperature. Of spring’s advance. He measured the air, the scents, the sunlight. Again, the gopher ducked and lifted. Then, in a splurge of mettle, it risked a mad dash across the range. Its extended tail became a flag that sunk and rose with the contours of the land until the scurrying varmint disappeared into another hole—a secret back door to the family tunnels. The hooves of the old mule plodded alongside this private sport, sending up puffs of dust with each drag and fall.
“Get on, ye flunkey,” spat the diminutive driver, following up with boots to the mule’s flanks. “Get-ye. I’s as soon turn ye on a spit. Consarn.”
Ott ejected a stream of juice from the side of his mouth and muttered further on the subject of his perturbedness. The brindled mule, who went by the name Sir Lucien, made on without haste, hanging its black snout low to the ground and flicking the season’s first flies from its ass.
“Addle-headed donkey fucker…”
Ott’s flaccid waistline jerked and sagged with the rhythm of his transport. The skin of his face was pockmarked; the dark moustache and side whiskers he wore were flecked with fragments of ash and thistledown. The man’s nose looked much like a mushroom, his teeth irregular and clay-tinted. On or two of the teeth sat sideways to how they ought. The corpulent neck was fixed to sloped shoulders that would not hold trousers. Try as Ott did, the straps he employed would slide swiftly outwards until they cascaded over the brinks, causing his trousers to drop to his ankles at inconvenient moments. Ingeniously, he had discovered that a knotted length of string could be used in place of the suspenders. Ott had not to be bothered by repeatedly untying the knot in order to do his business, for his trousers were fitted with a trapdoor like those apportioned to his undergarments. The convenience was beatific.
The wagon shook and creaked on the snaky path. The side planks and wheels had been cut by Ott’s granpappy a hundred ages ago, when he’d first arrived on the frontier. Time and weather had diminished the cart. It shimmied and jarred like a decrepit nag made of broken bones. Ott had a mind to secure the loose wheel nuts, but the way was long and he decided it was best to get on.
The driver clawed the hair of his chin and swivelled to look on the wagon’s contents. He fell into a silence before resuming the task of encouraging the mule.
On a low dirt mound amid shoots of weed and field brome, Ott discovered that two of the gophers were now humping enthusiastically. This was of interest. He commanded Sir Lucien to halt but the animal continued forth, heedless. Ott craned to see.
“Curses!” he blared at the mule. “Damned bloomin’ idjit.”
Slowly, they distanced themselves from home and property.
* * *
The wagon path wound close on to the acreage of the Métis. Ott’s backside was beginning to protest but he gave that no regard. The voyage was to be lengthy and trying: he would be forced to suffer his discomforts. From the fence line, he could see a pair of quarter horses tethered to a hitching post. Both were chestnut-coated and broadside to him. Fine, sixteen-hand beasts that kept to the sun and stood contented.
Mingling in a corner of the property were a score of brown hens. They pecked at one another and pecked at the ground and seemed to stab their own feet with their pointy beaks. In sudden, jerky manner they went about, forcing their way through the flock and turning about without warning. Thrusting their breasts, the hens strutted with tails fanned. Moving—always moving—they nibbled on feed and granules of stone.
The wagon dwindled to a standstill.
The Métis was approaching with a bucket of water. The man’s hands were grimy from his work. He bore a buckskin coat in the style of the coureurs des bois. A capote, by name, intricately beaded. Mitasses. A mosaic sash was tied about his waist, holding in place a knife sheaf and a fire bag. The bronze-complected man wore the look of one prepared to contend with any fate which befell him. Cavalry invasion, grasshopper infestation, bubonic plague: it was all one to the Métis. Trotting at the man’s side was an Alaskan Malamute with a thick coat and a curled tail.
The Métis’s wife was a petite Swampy Cree from up in the pines. Ott swooped his head in an effort to locate the woman but found no traces. How the two of them met Ott could not recollect, but he knew it as truth that the woman was a talent with the needle. She had a flare with moccasins and vests. It would’ve been her that had made the Métis’s sash, Ott wagered.
Sir Lucien gulped the water greedily. The Métis ladled a portion for Ott and passed the wooden spoon up to him.
“Mercy,” said the wagoner. The water was cold. He slurped half of it away and splashed a palmful onto his brow, though the air was nippy.
The Métis was not known for a garrulous nature. Ott took lead role in the discourse, remarking on the homesteader’s sturdy fence and the addition made to his chimbley. There was a brief digression into the state of Ott’s own chimbley, and how it came to pass that an unpleasant inflammation of hemorrhoids had prevented him from executing due repairs. Hemorrhoids were a damnable curse and irreversible, to his knowledge. Conversation turned to levels of mountain runoff in the region, and the plentiful number of poultry currently poking about the Métis’s feet.
Through these disjointed subjects, the Métis spoke little. His hair was bound in a ponytail, the creases of his forehead and cheeks indelible after years of labouring in all weathers. The Métis stroked the mule’s coarse neck and jowls. The big dog grinned.
“You are for town.”
Ott was uncertain whether the man was addressing the mule or himself.
“No, uh. Headin’ south.” His mouth hung open as though more should be said, but the words did not come.
The Métis looked to the wagon load, squinted, then asked, “Where your dog be?”
“I ain’t got no more dog. She done and got herself lured out by a pack o’ coyotes ‘n killed. It was last fall, that was.”
“Killed where?”
“Aw, mostly in the neck, I expect. I searched for her ‘n found a portion of her leg yonder north, half buried.”
Ott bit his lip. The Métis tilted his head. A dozen pelts of beaver hung stretched on the side of the Métis’s woodshed. Ott looked on them admiringly.
“Appears you made a fair haul on skins there. Reckon you got yerself a whole mess o’ stews from them there.”
The neighbour continued to give his attention to the animal. Ott sniffed, then sniffed again to break the silence. He wanted to tell the Métis how Granpappy once kept a line of traps down in the creek. How Pappy used to let him assist in stripping the plump animals. Slicing the tissue as he pulled the skins apart from the carcass. Yanking the thin legs free. Cutting the ears from the skull. But when Ott spoke, it was not of beaver pelts or thick stews.
“Yer missus,” Ott said with a nod toward the cabin. “If she would ever get a spare evenin’ and a hankerin’ to do somethin’ in the way of knittin’, I could use me a pair o’ warm wool stockin’s. Be obliged for a set o’ leather moccasins, too.”
Ott gestured at the decaying socks and long johns he wore inside his boots—boots that appeared limp and bedraggled, in as much need of replacing as the stockings themselves. He followed that up with a mime performance featuring criss-crossing knitting needles, to make himself known. Ott had heard the Métis speak French on a number of occasions, but the King’s English was not something the Métis had yet mastered.
“I’ll be home within two weeks if all goes a’right. Be obliged to recompense her as I can.”
He nodded his commitment to this vow, then waited on a response. When none was forthcoming, he smacked Sir Lucien with the reins. The mule did not react. Ott flicked with greater earnestness, and again the mule stood obstinate. The animal appeared to be enjoying the attention the Métis lavished upon it. Ott began to unload a series of low-pitched insults and criticisms, pausing only to scratch at his beard with jagged fingernails.
When Sir Lucien was at last agreeable to the idea, he toted the wagon forward. Ott touched his hat to his neighbour. The Métis closed his eyes as the wagon contents passed him by.
A half mile on, Ott glanced back on the homestead. The Métis’s comely wife had materialized from the cabin and glided toward her husband’s side. Solemn and ceremonial she was in her gait. The couple appeared to exchange no words, for there was nothing to say in the moment. It was an idyllic silhouette Ott observed: of matrimony and home, of horses that waited patiently, of shifting dots that were plump, mouth-watering hens. Ott turned his attention to his course.
* * *
Pender’s hovel was two days’ ride. More, perhaps, what with the decrepit wagon. Ott whipped the lackluster mule good.
The land was raw and wild and unbroken. Carpetweed and thistle clung to life here and there as though God had decided that dirt and more dirt was an excess unbecoming the region’s pathfinders. The weeds were robust, having survived the harsh winter with deep roots. The mule and wagon trundled on. Ott kneaded the lower section of his back.
Ice water ran steadily over the stony bed of the creek they came on. It dampened scraps of branch and offshoot that got caught in its grasp. The wagon followed the curves of the creek’s edge, inhabited by ruddy ducks and pipits. A red-necked grebe drifted silently along the water. Smaller land birds fluttered in and out of shrubbery in a kind of game or airy dance. Ott could not name the various species, but he could see them and take pleasure in their plumage. The mule lumbered on, inclined to go to low land.
Ott pushed up the brim of his hat. From farther on, new sounds rode the air. Splashing water. Spasms of laughter. Around a bend, Ott spotted them. Two fair-haired girls downstream, each kicking small waves at the other. Ott observed the scene. The sky’s wispy clouds were reflected in the water’s surface.
The children had their backs to the rolling wagon. They were young—perhaps ten or eleven, in Ott’s estimation. Younger maybe. Slender things. Ott had not had much cause to mix with children in the course of his life. To him, kids were nothing but shorter versions of adults. They had two legs and two arms. More teeth than adults, it seemed. Ott had observed children before. They would pinch the backsides of their mothers’ petticoats, shuffling along like little soldiers. Little ducklings. Wide-eyed and fitted with shiny shoes and hair bows. Children, much like dogs, had wet noses and hollow bellies.
Sir Lucien slowed. The girls below, once they had settled, stooped so that their hands disappeared beneath the waterline. They locked themselves into this position. It was as though their hands were now fastened to hidden chains or stuck in cement. Neither girl uttered a sound. Neither flinched. It was a test of wills, for the creek temperature would numb the skin. Ott could not believe what he was witnessing. He watched the patient duo for a count of sixty. It was an effort for him not to sneeze or to descend from the wagon.
Two minutes passed. Three. No movement. How, exactly, these babes could hold to their postures without protest or weakening Ott could not cipher. They were like skin-and-bone figurines, the frill bottoms of their frocks swaying slightly in the breeze.
The traveller passed a hand across his brow. He squinted. Then, it happened so quickly and briefly that he near to missed it. An arc of water flew up from the river surface before the taller of the girls and, as the cascade gave out, the girl’s clenched hands were seen aloft. She high-stepped her way toward shore. Slick and gold-green in her grip was a wriggling fish.
Ott put his head on an angle and spat at the bank for the stupefying feat he had just beheld. He snapped the bridle reins and rode closer to the elated damsels. The wagon shifted and groaned on the bumpy route.
“Shit patties and jiminy! I ain’t never!”
The girls shuffled close together when they heard the stranger. The one who held the fish—a sizeable perch—tossed her catch onto the bank. Clutching her sister’s hand, she faced the uninvited guest.
“I tell ye! I ain’t never seen the like!”
Ott scrambled down from his seat and waded through a border of limp reeds. He approached the young anglers, grinning broadly.
“By gum but didn’t ye up ‘n pluck that target outta there like it weren’t nothin’. Nothin’ but a cabbage. Ain’t that a fine trick!”
Ott’s head shook in wonderment. As he made his way for the girls, he saw that both had their hair tied in neat braids. Hair the colour of straw. The children weren’t much shorter than him. Wide-eyed and spindle-legged they were. The girls seemed to inch backwards as Ott expressed his jubilation.
“That there crick must be cold as the devil’s heart. I ask you now: was that the first and onliest time you ever accomplished that there stunt?”
The smaller child was half concealed behind the column of her sister. Both stood with mouths shut tight, fists pressed to their lips. The fetor which issued from the talkative stranger hit the girls’ nostrils hard.
Ott’s truncated arms re-enacted the performance.
“The way ye swiped at that little swimmer. By jiminy and shit patties! Ye’d have no need of hook or line with a talent like that’un!”
The children remained mute. They were inclined to flee, as would suit the instructions of their folks, but the elder girl was of a mind to take her catch with her.
“Was that a sweet ol’ perch I saw you git? I’d be obliged if ye were to instruct me, and how,” Ott went on. He entered into the creek until his boots were three-quarters soaked and he bent over to dip forearms into the flow. “Like such? T-Tell me now: patience is key to the task. Am I right in that? I must fix myself to bein’ patient and ever so still. Elsewise, I won’t accomplish a durn thing but to scare the rascals off. Am I right er am I right?”
Ott’s gaze went from the girls to the crystal waters before him. Loose stones on the creek bed shifted beneath his feet. Ott envisioned the striped fish slinking dumbly into his reach. Unsuspecting. He envisioned his own speed and dexterity, gripping the scales and plucking the prize from its wet home. He sensed the fast impression he would make on his young instructors. On Sir Lucien, even.
He waited.
In the mirror of ice water, Ott saw the shape of his hat. A felt hat that had at one time been creamy beige. The band he had lost long ago—the circumstances of which Ott disremembered. Assorted holes had presented themselves through the years. Sparks from campfires were the usual culprits: Ott had a tendency to lay his lid close aside the flames when he was overcome with fatigue. The brim was curled to a point of no return, the material soiled with dust and soot. Ott studied the old hat. Little more than a sack. It was Granpappy who had given it him.
The rippling mug that stared back at Ott was dark and drawn. Individual hairs on the brows spiked disjointedly; the length of the moustache was enough to cover the upper lip, making it appear as though it was a one-lipped face. Corpulent cheeks above the black beard had reddened under the spring sun.
Momentarily, the idea of fish was forgotten. The fact that Ott was not alone, that his hands were chilled—also forgotten. Staring into the eyes that stared right back at him, he studied the floating image. He searched for recognition. A note of familiarity. Lower, he bent himself. Lower still…
When he heard the girls’ tittering, they had gotten far afield, skipping along in haste. A basket dangled from the hand of the older girl. Ott called out to his tutors, but they did not hear. Neither turned round. The blonde heads receded toward the horizon. Ott looked down into the transparent creek. There was not a fish nor a minnow in sight.
The mule was pulling the wagon nearer the shore.
“Sakes alive! Git yer arse on away from there. Ye’ll pen yerself in with that wagon. I say git!”
Sir Lucien whimpered for want of a drink. Ott gave up on netting a perch with his bare hands. He plunged his hat beneath the water’s surface and brought the sieve of a bowl toward the mule, holding it beneath its long nose. A couple helpings more and Ott tugged at the mule’s cheek piece to get him righted. The pair had miles to cover before sunset.