• Chapter 29 •

Glen has built Roseanna a ramp, and every morning she wheels out the back door to feed the owl. It gobbles up moose-meat hamburger as fast as a dog. The owl has been able to hop up on a limb of the maple tree for some time now, and it can flap its wings with no sign of which one had been broken. Roseanna wheels back into the house where Angela is cleaning up the breakfast dishes.

“The owl looks healed to me,” Roseanna says. “Tell Chorniak to come and take it out of here.”

“Mr. Chorniak knows that it is healed,” Angela says. “Garth told me that he’s coming to get it this morning.”

“Garth is coming?”

“No, Mr. Chorniak.”

“How does he know?”

“I saw Garth at the rodeo, and I told him that the wing is healed and that the owl can fly. He said that he’d let his grandpa know.”

“Can’t you tell him yourself to make sure? Phone him. And while you are at it tell him we want to go on a picnic before it snows.”

“He’ll be here. Don’t worry.” Angela takes an election brochure from the table and puts it in a box of papers to be recycled.

“Are we going to vote this Wednesday?” she asks. “If we want to, we’ll have to be sworn in. I saw at the post office that we’re not on the voters’ list.”

“We can do it when we go to vote.”

“Can we?”

“Why not?”

“Will they let us?”

“They have to. I was poll clerk in Regina Elphinstone. I know the rules.”

“Our vote would count if we could vote in Regina.”

“What does it matter? At least we know where we stand with the Sask Party.”

As much as Roseanna wants to be rid of the owl, she’s beginning to think of it as her collaborator. She knows that the bird was born in the coulee, and she’s convinced herself that it carries the coulee’s spirit. She’s convinced herself that if they can corner Chorniak down there, the spirits will side with them. The spirits will expose him as the intruder that he is, and make him confess to everything.

She thinks the spirits are working already when Mac shows up right after lunch, driving his truck into the backyard. He’s prepared to take the owl out to Bone Coulee.

“But why not just open the cage and let the blame thing fly away?” he asks Angela.

“Ask Mother,” Angela says.

“It would stay here,” says Roseanna. “That’s why. It thinks I’m its mother and the tree is home. It doesn’t even have to hunt for its food.”

“So,” Angela suggests, “maybe if it’s back out in the coulee it will adapt to how it’s supposed to live.”

“Things alive,” Mac says, “or things dead like the buffalo skull. You’d think we should all move out there.”

“The duck should go back too,” says Roseanna.

“Have you got an empty cardboard box?” Mac asks Angela. “Something we can put the owl in. And some duct tape?”

“I’ll look in the house,” Angela says.

Mac sits down on one of Angela’s willow-crafted lawn chairs. “Sure is warm for this late in the fall,” he tells Roseanna.

“Indian Summer, eh?”

“Good picnic weather.”

“I wasn’t feeling too good when you went with Angela. I’m feeling really good now. I’m ready for a picnic before the snow comes. You could bring the duck to put it back.”

“There are enough waterfowl out there as is,” Mac says.

“Not a funny joke,” Roseanna says.

A car door slams, and in a moment they hear the click of Jane Smythe-Crothers’s shoes on the walkway by the side of the house.

“Esther told me that I’d find you here,” she tells Mac. “And Mrs. Wilkie. You two would make quite a pair for my documentary.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Don’t worry, Mac. But I would like to get your collection on film. Darlene mentioned something about a stone duck that you found.”

“He’s stingy with the duck,” Roseanna says.

Angela steps out of the porch with a cardboard box. She hands it to Mac, at the same time asking Jane, “What brings you to our backyard?” They give each other a hug.

Mac takes the cardboard box into the cage. The owl hops from one branch to another, then soars past his head. It sways on a branch of the maple tree. Mac holds up the open box and shakes the limb, expecting rather foolishly that the bird might fall into it. Instead, the bird swoops, its healthier wing striking the box, and feathers fly. Mac grabs at the owl’s claws, only to get his hands bloodied. He will get his eyes scratched out before he’ll ever get the owl in the box.

Angela opens the cage door, and in the scramble the bird flies out. Mac staggers out of the cage.

“Stupid bird,” Roseanna says.

The owl soars above them, back and forth across the yard, and then it flies off to perch high up on one of Esther Rawling’s maple trees. Esther’s dog scurries back and forth in her yard, yipping in a frenzy as only Esther’s dog can. The owl stares downward, and the dog scratches at the trunk of the tree, never ceasing its chatter. Moments later, the owl unfolds its wings, then sets them close again. Mac collapses on the willow-craft lawn chair, gasping for breath.