• Chapter 31 •

Two months ago when Mac and Abner saw the Wilkies out at the coulee, Mac felt that those women had no right to be snooping around without his permission. Abner didn’t agree, but that was simply his politics talking. But over the two months, they’ve had a reversal in attitudes. Abner thinks the Indian women are playing to Mac’s weaknesses, and Mac is taking them for a picnic in the coulee.

During the two months he has learned that these women have a legitimate attachment to the coulee, and he has learned something about himself. He wants to share the coulee with them, in a private and peaceful sharing of nature. He wishes Jane were still here to join them, but he’s not as eager for a foursome with Abner, Jen and Esther. That will have to wait for another time.

Yet he’s bothered by certain developments during the two months, and he shouldn’t dismiss Abner out of hand. He might have had a point in stating that the very presence of the Wilkies has triggered Mac’s guilty thoughts.

And to trigger Mac’s guilty thoughts is exactly what Roseanna has in mind. She wants Mac Chorniak’s guilt exposed before she dies.

“But no fancy bottle of wine,” she tells Angela. “Tell him orange juice.”

They drive down to a flat piece of prairie near the bent and twisted ash trees. The wind is rising and the sky is starting to cloud over. Mac and Angela gather firewood, and Roseanna tests the suitability of the terrain for her wheelchair.

When they have enough wood, Mac builds a fire while Angela rolls out dough for bannock. The weather’s not nearly what is was the last time they were down here, and they’ll be thankful for the heat from a fire.

“We need sticks for the bannock,” Angela says.

Mac cuts two chokecherry branches, stripping off the leaves and sharpening the ends.

“Your mother need a stick?” Mac asks.

“She will want to roast her own bannock. I know that,” Angela says.

“Where did she go?”

“I think she went into the trees,” Angela says. “I hope she’ll be okay with the wheelchair.”

Mac cuts another stick for Roseanna, then gets chairs from the truck. He takes one out of its bag and unfolds it.

“I brought lawn chairs. There’s one for me, and one for you,” he says as he pulls the second chair out of its bag.

“Ayeee!” Roseanna comes wheeling out of the trees. “Ayeee! Ayeee!” She grabs her flannel blanket from her legs and flaps it in the air. “The bird chases me!” she says. “Shoo, you death bird. Shoo!”

The owl hovers over them, flying in circles, phloopa, phloopa, then it veers towards the buffalo jump. It flies to the top, where it perches on an information sign left from the rodeo weekend. Roseanna pulls up to the fire, all the while keeping her eyes fixed on the owl.

“Stay up there,” she says.

“Why so excited, Mother? Haven’t you seen an owl before?”

“The same one? And chasing me like I’m a field mouse?”

“You probably just scared it,” Angela says. “Or maybe it is the same owl, and it thinks you are its mother. Didn’t you say that it thinks you are its mother? Here, roast some bannock. I’ll wrap the dough on a stick for you.”

“A sign,” Roseanna says. “The time for you has come, Chorniak.” Her grey hair falls down her face, and through its strands her eyes reflect the fire. Her plastic oxygen lines bob on her chin.

“It is death, Chorniak, and you know death. The owl knows death. Thomas’s death.” She pulls on the wheels of her chair, turning a half-circle to gaze up again at the owl.

“You live a lie, Chorniak.”

The owl’s head swivels back and forth with its eyes locked to its movement. Mac wonders if he’s imagining all this; or does this woman actually have some shaman connection with an owl. He recalls Shevchenko’s poetry on owls:

The owls in glades call out their warnings,

And ash trees creak and creak again….

What does she know?

Roseanna throws her blanket on the fire.

“Mom! What are you doing?” Angela asks as she attempts to retrieve the blanket from the flames.

“Leave it!” Roseanna says. “The campsite! Chorniak! Smell it! Smell burning cloth!”

Mac stares at this horror of a woman, at the fire, at Angela, and then he connects with the smells of the burning blanket, the old kokum dragging the Indian from the fire.

Going to paragraph #5 it shows the campsite.

There is evidence that there were people

there in the headlights of the car.

There was a drinking party out there; there is

no question about that; and this was amongst

their own people in that area, in that tenting

ground…

“You are the girl…?”

Roseanna coughs from the smoke. She pulls her wheelchair away from the fire, but still she coughs, over and over. Her oxygen tube pulls away from her nose, and Angela struggles to get the device back in place. The coughing finally subsides.

“I am the ballplayer’s sister. Thomas’s sister. Remember the kewpie doll?”

He remembers. Mostly he remembers the girl’s eyes, but right now her hair hangs over Roseanna’s eyes. He looks over at Angela and he wonders why he hadn’t noticed the resemblance before. He curses himself for thinking that all the pretty ones look the same.

“Could be the car running over him that killed Thomas, the lawyer said. Eh? Thomas drunk. Eh? You know he wasn’t drunk. You know he wasn’t passed out on the ground. But you said nothing to answer the lawyer. You had no business to be there. Why did you come, anyway?”

“For you and your sister.”

“Squaws, eh? Smoked meat!”

“That’s what we did call you back then. We did, Angela. We didn’t know any better, and we were drunk. But I didn’t do it.”

“Nobody did, eh? Thomas knocked himself on the head with a post. How stupid do you think I am?”

“I’m sorry.”

“And that’s all you can say? You are sorry?”

“What am I supposed to do? Report it to the Bad Hills Eagle?”

“That would be a good start.”

“Maybe something like that would resolve things,” Angela says. “I don’t think you’d have to worry about criminal charges. Not with the statute of limitations. And you can’t be charged twice for the same crime.”

“What are you babbling?” Roseanna says. “I thought you studied art at university, not to be some fancy lawyer.”

“I’m just telling him that he wouldn’t have to go to jail.”

“I didn’t do it,” Mac says again.

“How do you know you didn’t drive over him?”

“I don’t.” He pauses, and then he says, “I’ll give you the duck.”

“The duck?” Roseanna says. “Here’s your duck!”

She takes the two pieces out of a plastic bag and throws them at Mac’s feet. “You thought you were such a lover boy to give me this kewpie doll, but see what I did with it? I chopped her in half with an axe!”

“What do you want me to do?” Mac stares into the fire. He bends forward in his chair and holds shaking hands over his eyes. Snow begins to fall.

“Not so proud any more,” Roseanna says. “Eh?”

Snowflakes hiss in the flames. Angela reaches for Mac’s shoulder, stops, then slowly draws her hand away. Roseanna spits at his feet.

Mac peers up at the closed-in sky, and at the owl on its post.

“Killers!” Roseanna says.

Mac gets to his feet, bends down to pick up the two pieces of the doll and puts them in his pocket. His eyes pinch. His fists clench and unclench, and his throat tightens. His jaws clench, and his eyes fill with tears. His throat constricts all the more, and he gasps. He sobs, and the sounds escape with each unclenching of his fists until his arms bend upward and his fingers snake up his neck to press on his temples. He clutches at his hair and grabs at his cap to tear it off and hold it out in front of his face. He twists the cloth like a chunk of rope, then drops it on the ground.

“Choke, you son of a bitch,” Roseanna says.

Snowflakes melt on his forehead, and the water drips off his nose with his tears. Mac falls to his knees.

“Don’t fall in the fire,” Roseanna says, and she wheels over rough terrain down to the base of the buffalo jump.

“Leave me alone,” Mac tells Angela. He scans the terraced hillside with the ridges where countless buffalo walked for countless years and centuries, and he looks over to the tipi rings where Indians camped, and to the rock where their women scraped hides. The coulee’s not his any more. What use is it to him, or to Lee, or to Garth? Isn’t his intention to commemorate the buffalo bone trail?

“Fire’s dying out,” he tells Angela, and he adds a couple of sticks of wood. Roseanna’s burnt blanket crumbles to ashes. Mac walks down the incline to join Roseanna at the base of the buffalo jump.

“Roseanna?”

“What do you want?”

“I have a favour to ask. It’s more than a favour. Can you…?”

“What do you want now? Another duck?”

“Can you forgive me, Roseanna?”

She swipes the hair away from her face, and Mac turns his face away.

“Ah, Chorniak, you are sorry, even if you took your sweet time. What about the others? You know that Glen will talk to the lawyers. We want all people to know. We can’t bring Thomas back, but at least maybe his spirit will now find some rest.”

The snow falls thicker, and the wind seems to be picking up. Roseanna calls to Angela:

“Come down here. Chorniak says he is sorry.”

“One more thing,” Mac says, “and I’m not asking any favours. But I think I’m ready to discuss land claims.”

“This coulee, eh?”

“I don’t need it any more.”

“He doesn’t need the coulee any more,” she calls to Angela.

The snow now swirls down in sheets, and the wind howls. Angela grabs the handles of the wheelchair.

“You’ll sell the coulee?” she asks Mac.

“Not sell. Give. And a commemoration bench at the top of the jump, where a person could sit and look down into the coulee. And maybe I’ll just keep a little plot for myself in those trees. Build a little summer place....”

“I can die now,” Roseanna says.

“Don’t say that!” Angela swings the wheelchair to face uphill. Roseanna coughs, then gasps for air.

“Your tube’s slipped down,” Angela says. “Let me fix it.” She turns to Mac. “We’d better get her to the truck.”

Mac notices how the snow sweeps down from the top of the coulee, building up in drifts. “We don’t have to worry about the fire,” he says. “But getting out of here might be something else. Good thing the truck’s a four-wheel drive.”

They each grab a handle and push the wheelchair up the incline, facing into the wind and drifting snow, all the way to the truck. Roseanna coughs harder and harder.