• Chapter 14 •

Angela’s at the hall Friday morning judging exhibits and she’s at it all day, writing on tags with felt markers: first, second or third prize. Pinning on ribbons. Darlene’s there, assisting a man and lady from the provincial association. They judge the bread and pastries, garden and farm produce, from pumpkins to red lentils. Esther judges the quilts and knitted sweaters. Esther has thanked Angela three or four times, saying how important it is to get the young people involved.

“Mrs. Rawling showed us her quilting frame,” Angela tells Darlene. “It’s a real antique. From Boston, before the American Revolution.”

“A relic like me,” Esther says. “But it’s time for tea and cinnamon buns.”

“You should have these entered,” Darlene says.

“They’re not mine. Jen sent them. She’d be here this morning, but she’s trying to get rid of a cold. Jen and I are riding on the Buffalo Hollow Homemakers float, and she’d never want to miss that. Better we eat these buns before the people from the Association get back from the café.”

“There are plenty,” Darlene says.

“Isn’t it just wonderful to have Angela here?” Esther says. “We need youth. To carry on the heritage. I hear that you are doing something about saving the old pool hall, Darlene.”

“Yes, for a boutique.”

“Will there be enough business?”

“Rural Development thinks so. There’s a grant. Angela’s come at exactly the right time. We could sell her work in the boutique: baskets, dream catchers…”

“You think so?” Angela asks.

“And it won’t cost you a cent. We could even hold your classes in the boutique. All I need is your signature on a grant application.”

“My signature?”

“The REDA grant. With your signature, it’s as good as a guarantee that we’ll get it. Don’t you think Angela and I would make a great team, Esther?”

“I’m sure,” Esther says, and she takes a sip of tea.

Angela wakes to the sound of a siren. At first she thinks there must be a fire somewhere. She hurries out of bed to join her mother, who’s already at the front room window. It’s a fire truck. Sid Rigley drives, holding a megaphone out the side window.

“Get out of bed, Esther! Pancake breakfast in the Lion’s Den beer gardens.”

“He wakes up the town?” Roseanna says.

The siren sounds a second time.

“How about you people?” Sid’s voice blares from the megaphone. “Pancake breakfast! Sausage! Eggs! Hash browns! We’ve even got Kwok Ming at the grill.”

“Should we go?” Angela asks.

“I had my bannock and jam,” says Roseanna.

“I’ll leave you then. I promised Mrs. Rawling I would go to the hall to help with the exhibits.”

“The campsite pictures. Make sure you take them, even if you didn’t draw Thomas’s death.”

“I took them yesterday.” She had thought about taking her star blanket, but then decided not to; she didn’t want it to look as if it was in a competition. With Sid Rigley’s megaphone still blaring up and down the streets of Duncan, Angela walks to the village hall. Esther and Darlene are the only ones there, but moments later Jane arrives. She tells them that in the afternoon they’ll be filming the cairn dedication, but this morning she wants to see the exhibits. It’s then that she notices Esther’s quilt.

“What is it?” Esther asks.

“This quilt. I had one just like it.” She strokes the fabric, then picks it up and holds it to her cheek. “Quilts go back a long way in my family. I don’t know how far back. I’ve inherited the Smythe family’s quilting frame. I had the Wedding Ring quilt that my great-grandmother made, until the mice got into the cottage last winter. I suppose you wouldn’t sell this one?”

“It’s for my son,” Esther says. “You’ll just have to get busy and make yourself one. That would please great-grandmother.”

“If I knew how. But I’m more of a historian of quilting. When I inherited the Wedding Ring, I researched the history of the pattern, and that got me onto others. Quilt patterns are my hobby.”

“Before you leave,” Esther says, “we’ll have to have a good chinwag about quilts.”

Jane walks along the rows of tables, stopping now and then to test the weight of a beet, a turnip, a pumpkin; to smell a bouquet of asters. She stops to examine the paintings and drawings.

“Can I see what you have?” she asks Angela.

“Two,” Angela says.

“Your elevator is very human,” Jane says. “And very vulnerable. It knows that it is doomed. You put a lot of passion into your work, Angela.”

“I try.”

“And it seems to breathe with life….”

“Life and death,” Angela says.

Jane studies the second picture for a long time without saying anything. Finally, she sets it down, and seemingly without realizing, lays the elevator picture on top of it.

“Your tents have eyes,” she says.

“Yoo hoo!” Esther says. “I’m going to leave you ladies now. I have to iron my pioneer dress for the parade. Watch for us, Jane. The Buffalo Hollow Homemakers’ float. You’ll never guess what our theme is for this year.”

The floats congregate in the schoolyard, some of them passing Angela and her mother’s house on their way. The parade has been assembling for more than an hour: trucks, cars, tractors…, horses pulling floats. Children ride bicycles, tricycles and battery-driven cars and trucks. A fire engine from Bad Hills drives by; and a New Holland, and a John Deere combine, each as wide as the street. Sid Rigley is back on Duncan’s yellow fire truck, his voice blaring, “Okay. Take your horses where the others are, over by the flagpole. We’re almost ready to start.”

Angela has invited Darlene and Jane to watch the parade from her front yard. Roseanna is outside with them, seated on her walker. Others are seated in lawn chairs up and down the sidewalk and across the street.

“Okay,” Sid’s voice booms. “We’re ready to go! And just a reminder. Two o’clock at Bone Coulee! The Amati Strings!”

Two marching red-coated Mounties lead the parade. The clowns follow behind. One of the clowns carries a plastic trumpet. Another, a tuba. A third, a kettle drum. Two other clowns wave ballooned hands. A police car behind the clowns is all siren sounds and red and blue flashing lights. The community band rides on a float. Nick Belak marches with two other men from the Bad Hills chapter of the Knights of Columbus. They wear black hats with brims up on the sides, tails of white fur, and black suits with red-lined capes. Each knight holds a sword upright.

John Popoff drives the Green Car plastered with NDP signs. The horses appear. Four teams of black Percherons, their gaits majestic, their harnesses adorned with silver bells and their hames topped with red plumes, pull wagons. One horse farts and lets go with its droppings plop, plop, plop on the road. A team of Shetlands pulls a tiny wagon. Twenty or more men, women and children from the Bad Hills Riding Club ride their horses.

“There’s Garth!” Darlene says. He drives his Sport Fury convertible, its hood draped with the Sask Party banner and candidate Eddy Huff waving to the crowd from the back seat.

Angela hears the putt, putt, putt of Mac Chorniak’s John Deere D, pulling the float of the Buffalo Hollow Homemakers’ Club. Esther Rawling and Jen Holt sit in rocking chairs. They wear long dresses with bonnets made from the same material.

“Yoo hoo!” Esther shouts, and she waves until Jane waves back.

“It appears you’ve made a hit with Esther,” Darlene says.

“It’s the quilt,” Jane says. “I could tell that it means a lot to her, and she could see that it means a lot to me.”

Esther waves again, until Jen reaches over to pull her sister’s arm down. Jen waves with just a slight bend of her wrist, and then swings her arm to point at the quilts displayed on the float and the sign:

KEEP OUR SOLDIERS WARM OVERSEAS

(Buffalo Hollow Quilters’ Project, 1940/45)

“Sherman’s March,” Jane says, pointing to one of the quilts with its orderly pattern of squares and rectangles. “The design com-memorates General Sherman’s march through Georgia during the American Civil War. The pattern has other names…Monkey Wrench, Love-Knot, Hole-in-the-Barn-Door, Puss-in-the-Corner….”

“You have done your research,” Darlene says.

“I find it an interesting path in the walk into history.”

“You’ll see another path at Bone Coulee this afternoon,” Darlene says. “Are you coming out?” Darlene asks Angela.

“I don’t know. Should we go to Bone Coulee to see the cairn ceremony, Mother?”

“Too many people,” Roseanna says.

As people drive out from town and cluster along the top of the coulee above the old Chorniak homestead, Mac watches Darlene direct the dignitaries to each side of the monument. He is not slated to speak; well enough to leave that chore to politicians. He looks around for Angela and her mother, but doesn’t see them. Jane Smythe-Crothers and crew are here. Eddy Huff is here. Pete, Nick and Jeepers stand at the edge of a crowd of people that must be nearing two hundred. He doesn’t notice Garth anywhere, but then Darlene said it didn’t matter if he didn’t show up. She didn’t want it to seem to be a Chorniak affair, but she takes it upon herself to welcome everybody and to explain the order of proceedings for the afternoon. As a courtesy to the main funding body that made the project possible, she calls on John Popoff to represent the provincial government.

“But no election campaigning,” she says.

“Such a thing never entered my mind,” he says as he shakes Darlene’s hand.

“Thank you, Ms. Chairperson, Darlene. Ladies and Gentlemen. The community of Duncan does itself proud every year with the staging of its agricultural fair, and now it can be especially proud with the erection of this milestone. I say milestone, because the word can be used not only for a thing to mark distance in miles, but also to mark distance over time. And I don’t know if any of you can feel it, but for me to stand out here, and to look out over the coulee, to know the major part that the buffalo played over the centuries in the lives of our indigenous people right out here, makes me feel pretty small and insignificant compared to the coulee’s grandeur. Our premier wasn’t able to make it here today, so he asked if I wouldn’t mind filling in for him. On behalf of the government, I, in my humble capacity as one of its long-shot candidates, convey the government’s best wishes and commend your committee for its work done in preserving our province’s heritage.”

As John Popoff steps down from the podium, Eddy Huff steps up to shake his hand.

“You’re a hard act to follow,” Eddy says. “I’d wish you the best of luck in the upcoming election if I wasn’t running against you.”

“Must be the air,” Johnny says. “Up here the election really does seem insignificant.”

“I’m with you on that, Johnny. I wear two hats. The political one doesn’t fit up here.”

“Thank you, Johnny. Darlene, Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to Bone Coulee. John Popoff spoke of a milestone. It can mark distance into the past, and it can mark distance into the future. I have been chosen to read the scripture embossed on the plaque, but first off, Darlene has asked me to ask Esther Rawling to come forward to cut the ribbon and to lift the shroud cover to make the monument come to life.”

Abner and Jen Holt hang on to the ribbon as Esther snips it with her own scissors, and she lifts the cloth from the monument, folding it as neatly as she would one her own quilts. Pastor Huff takes a few moments to scan the crowd, and to scan further down into the coulee. Then he reads the scripture embossed in bronze:

“The hand of the Lord was upon me,

and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord,

and set me down in the midst of the valley

which was full of bones. (Ezekiel 37:1)”

“If the mayor will come up now,” Pastor Eddy says, “he’s going to read the dedication, and then you’ll be done with the politicians. It’s all yours, Sid.”

“Now isn’t that some introduction,” Sid says. “Maybe now that I’m up here I can preach a sermon. But I’ll start off with the dedication, and then Darlene says we’ll have some music, which is what most of you have come out for in the first place.”

Sid read the following:

THE OLD BONE TRAIL

Several routes crossed the prairie

one branch crossing through this

site. Before 1900 it was used mainly

by buffalo-bone pickers to convey

this country’s first paying “crop”

to Moose Jaw and Saskatoon. From

about 1900 to 1909 many of this

district’s homesteaders used it

to bring their effects. Later they

traversed it to take produce to

market and to bring back supplies.

In places on the raw prairie the

deep ruts are still evident.

Erected by the Duncan Agricultural Society

in cooperation with the Rural Municipality

of Duncan #255, the Village of Duncan,

and the Government of Saskatchewan.

Mac ponders over the mention of the buffalo bones being Saskatchewan’s first paying crop. He doesn’t read many books, but he did read one that Esther gave him: East of Eden. It caught his attention because John Steinbeck seemed to care about farmers. It really caught his attention when he realized that the author was taking farming all the way back to Adam’s sons, and how they farmed east of the Garden of Eden. Abel was a keeper of sheep and Cain was a tiller of the ground. The Lord had respect for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no respect.

Then Mac hears Darlene:

“We have the honour this afternoon to hear the Amati String Quartet. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Amati Strings!”

The musicians arrange themselves beside the monument, overlooking the crowd. They look to one another and they tune to each other; who is flat and who is sharp. They draw their bows back and forth across their strings. Their fingers twist knobs that loosen and tighten the strings, until finally the rasps and squeals blend and transform, and the music starts.

The instruments not only blend with one another, but they also seem to meld into the harmony of Bone Coulee. Pleasant. Restful. Thoughtful. Long and drawn at first, and then the music quickens into a bounce. Mac imagines the plunk, plunk, plunk of a Ukrainian minstrel’s kobza.

“Not bad for old instruments,” he tells Esther.

“A lot you know about classical music,” she says.

Like a sudden theme change in the music, discord swells up from the bowels of the coulee. Hundreds of crows scream in unison, swirling from one bluff top to another. Every scream of caws louder than the one before it.

Mac’s view is clear. He sees the crows. He sees the buffalo jump on the far side of the coulee, and the harvested fields beyond. He sees the stink lake a mile or so to his right, and beyond it more stubble fields, some still in swath. And even further beyond, he sees the faint outline of Duncan.

By the crows and aspen bluffs, because of last week’s rain and the uncommon warmth of this year’s October sun, Mac knows there will be mushrooms. He and Peggy used to pick them. He hears another sound, but this time it’s not crows.

“Hyyaiii! Hyyaiii!”

The yells come from the same direction, from down the trail past the old homestead, to where the trail winds around an aspen bluff. A horse-drawn cart, a replica of a Red River cart, climbs up the trail. Garth holds on to the reins. Angela’s brother Glen stands beside him in the cart. Behind them, Roseanna sits on a chair.