• Chapter 9 •

Mac had noticed Jen Holt befriending the Wilkie woman, and he figured it couldn’t help but be a good thing. If anybody had a finger on the pulse of things, it was Jen, and she’d be the first to know if the woman might be up to no good or if she just seemed such a grouch because of the state of her health. He knocks on the Wilkie door at a quarter to eight, then wonders if he might be early and they won’t yet be out of bed. He waits a moment, then thinks he should leave and come back later. As a parting gesture he tries the knob, only to discover that the door’s not locked. He opens it partway, enough to get his head in and see Roseanna standing at the kitchen entry, leaning on a cane.

“Who is it?” he hears Angela call from another room.

“Chorniak,” Roseanna says.

“Tell him to come in.”

“Why?” Roseanna asks.

“I brought the owl,” Mac says.

“Hmmmph,” Roseanna says as she turns her back to him and shuffles past Angela, brushing her hair at a hallway mirror.

“He brought the owl,” Roseanna says, and then she lowers her head and mumbles, “Kokum used to say that owls are death birds. She told us that an owl flew over the camp the night those men killed Thomas. I think I remember seeing it, and Kokum said.”

“Maybe I should come back later,” Mac says, thinking that he’s being ignored, that he’s not welcome.

“I’ll be right with you,” Angela says. “Coffee’s on.”

Mac has the owl in Esther’s dog crate in the back of his truck, along with the roll of chicken wire, hammer and nails, staple gun and staples, a five-gallon pail filled with rocks, a crowbar, an electric power auger, an extension cord, some boards he had stored away up in his garage and the used fence posts.

“Where do you want the cage?”

“Anyplace where dogs and cats can’t get it.” Angela pours two cups of coffee, then looks out to see Mac’s truck backed into the yard.

“I thought I would build it around your maple tree. That way the bird could feel right at home. Abner’s coming over to help me.”

“Let’s have our coffee first. Here. Sit down. Do you take sugar and cream?”

“Both,” Mac says.

“Has the owl been eating anything?”

“Pecks away at soup bones, and it just gobbles up raw hamburger.”

Mac would like Esther to see the inside of this house. It might change her opinion on young city people getting away with cheap rent. The table centrepiece is a Nabob coffee can encircled with braided willow and filled with pussy willows. Mac’s mother always had pussy willows. Angela’s mother sits in the living room on a crafted wicker chair. On the wall above the kitchen sink, a dream catcher drapes a framed diploma:

First Nations University of Canada

Angela Marie Wilkie

Bachelor of Fine Arts

“I think your friend is here,” Angela says.

They can both see Abner examining the materials in the truck box.

“We’re in here,” Mac says.

Abner comes into the porch, his arms hanging and shaking like a set of wind chimes.

“Just in time for coffee,” Angela says.

“I gotta tell you what I just heard at the café,” he tells Mac.

“You’d better sit down first. The way you’re shaking you’ll either fall down or kick a hole in the wall.”

“At the café….” Abner grabs onto the tabletop and plunks himself down on a chair. “Your son…. Eddy Huff…. Sid Rigley….” He stops and takes a deep breath.

“Cream and sugar for your coffee?” Angela asks.

“Yes, and, and…, thank you, Ma’am.” He turns again to Mac. “Your son…they’re scheming at the café to get Huff on the podium….”

“What in heaven’s name are you blathering about?”

“Blathering?” Abner says. “You’re sounding Irish. Like Peggy used to talk.”

“What’s this about Huff and a podium? Like in his church?”

“They want him to ride up on horseback….”

“Where?”

“At their big rally in Bone Coulee. The light show.”

“This election has you all stirred up,” Mac says.

“The light show and rodeo are for Celebrate Saskatchewan, not for Sask Party propaganda.”

“You should suggest that Johnny Puff ride up in his biodiesel Rabbit.”

“Your son’s on the municipal council, and he’s got them convinced to build a new road right down to the site. They want to cut into the hill for seating. They figure there’ll be more than a hundred campers parked where the tipi rings are, in addition to the horse trailers that come for rodeo.”

“Lee hasn’t said anything to me about the road,” Mac says. “Maybe I should go out there this afternoon.”

Roseanna calls from the living room. “Eh…eh…Angela!”

“I’ll see what she wants,” Angela says. “If you like, help yourselves to more coffee.”

“No thanks,” Mac says. “Abner and I may as well get started on the cage.”

“But you’d better talk to them,” Abner says.

As soon as they are out the door, Roseanna comes back into the kitchen. “Ask him to take you there,” she says. “Let the spirits talk to you there. Make him fight with his son.”

When Angela gets outside, Mac is already pacing out the dimensions for the owl cage, and he marks each corner where he’ll sink a post.

“Plug the extension cord in that outlet on the side of the house,” he tells Abner. He connects the cord to the power auger and drills a two-foot hole. Abner drops in a post, and Mac tamps rocks down around it with his crowbar. They do the same on each corner, and they are ready for the boards and the chicken wire.

“You said you were going out to Bone Coulee this afternoon?” Angela asks from where she’s been sitting on the back step, watching them work.

“Right after lunch,” Mac says.

“Mind if I come along?”

“I don’t see why not. You might even be able to help me out if I get into a squabble with the municipal council. It’s not just my heritage they’re messing around with…without my permission. They’re messing around with yours too. You likely have more clout than I do when dealing with the upper levels of government.”

When the cage is done, Mac asks Abner if he’d like a lift home, but Abner says he needs the exercise. He also can’t join them on the look around at Bone Coulee, because he’s going door-knocking with John Popoff.

“You could have lunch with us,” Angela tells Mac, but he’s got some leftover Kraft Dinner that he should finish up before it goes bad. He tells Angela that he will pick her up after lunch.

As the truck drives out, and as Abner struts in his shaking fashion out the backyard, Roseanna comes out of the house with her cane. She studies the owl cage and then shakes her head.

“No good to keep an owl,” she tells Angela.

The owl blinks its eyes, then fixes a stare right at Roseanna.

“It is scheming,” Roseanna says. She blinks several times back at the bird. “If we have to have it here, and we have to feed it, maybe it can help us with my brother’s death.”