Osho stayed home, ostensibly with a treeplanter’s wrist cramp, but in fact he spent the day lying in wait for the creature and eventually shot it with the camp rifle that was kept for emergencies in the office tent. This created a brief upset for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that Osho had neither a hunting nor a gun licence. In what appeared to be a premeditated act, he had broken the lock to the gun case with a stone and lain quietly in wait to destroy the bear. Marilene witnessed the violence from the door of the cookshack and began to wail. The bear was a bristle of twitching fur, shuddering in its death throes. Osho rocked back and forth laughing like a madman, his tie-dyed orange button-down shirt flapping in the summer breeze. The bear was dead.
Marilene shouted, How could you do that? You’re a vegetarian.
I thought you loved me, he yelled back.
That’s beside the point, she said. I thought you loved animals. I thought we agreed here. Marilene’s apron was wet with the insipid pink of chicken blood. It was fajita night.
I love animals, he screeched. I love you. He was crying, the way men cry when they don’t want to, his face a contortion of holding.
Osho sat staring at the bear corpse until the crews drove in. Ortwin talked him into giving up the gun. It was rumoured that he intended to commit suicide with it if Marilene didn’t come around, but in fact the rifle was a single shot. The barrel was empty and he didn’t have any ammunition anyway, didn’t even know how to load the thing. Stanley came in from Powassen and told the ministry forester that he killed the bear. The moment of death was fudged. Stanley winched the carcass up into the back of his rusty red pickup.
My wife is going to be pretty happy for the freezer meat, Stanley said. There was a thin trail of dark blood on the ground behind the truck. The animal looked as if it was sleeping, its paws pointing skyward in a strange wave as the truck pulled out and receded down the bumpy dirt road.
The death did not stem the rising tide of anxiety in the camp. I had attributed this growing tension to the bear’s unpredictable presence, but I was mistaken. A verbal jostling of which I had previously been unaware rose to a pitch that was unavoidable — bitter, rancorous comments were whispered between planters, and although the context of these gossips was petty and inconsequential, they created an unsettled environment. The weather too was unbearable. We ran out of drinking water before the heat of the afternoon reached its apex. It was not uncommon to encounter sweaty, half-clad planters; Joe and Ed were no longer anomalous. Clara passed us with a furrowed brow and duct tape wrapping each breast into a cone; her skin glistened with baby oil, half-dead blackflies writhed on her.
Iron woman, she said. I nodded. Paul planted up the rear, stooped in perfect, rhythmic timing to her stoop, a moronic smile cutting across his stubbled face. There was an increase in the time-honoured game of musical tents. It became impossible to predict where anyone might be at any given time. Nightly moans lifted into the still, dark night. I alone, I supposed, remained true to myself, pumping away at the ever-more-ethereal sexual fantasy of Ortwin’s arms, the owner of which had himself found dubious solace in the arms of a local tree runner who wore a wide-brimmed leather hat and whistled “Motorcycle Mama.” Ortwin had hired him from the Hearst Nightclub. And sweet Jesus. He fit right into the mix. Karl, my nemesis, was the only other celibate besides Osho, who was in the doghouse for killing the bear, and Willem, who, it turned out, had a girl back home.
She’s not exactly a girlfriend, he said.
Karl reached out to me in the crummy and ran his finger along the side of my neck.
I don’t know about you, my friend, he said, but I’m so horny I could fuck a moose.
As I lay in my tent that night, a moose did come right up and rustle the nylon of my dome house with its muzzle. I hissed and it bounded off into the bush. I caught a glimpse of its long elegant legs picking through the understory, my face framed in the zippered archway of the tent door. It made me think of Osho, his long legs clad in ochre jogging pants, his angst dance though the day, spear-chucking, cursing the gods, and of how this one act of disobedience, this bear shooting had somehow created him in my mind. I saw him clearly now, sitting in lotus position, the rifle resting on his shoulder, a beatific grin forming. How suddenly he came into being.
Willem no longer needed my workaday advice, but we had grown used to one another and tended to plant together. I still put my trees in twice as quickly as he did, and so we were separated for long periods of time. While I filled in the back of our corridors, he moved at right angles to my activity. In this way I moved in and out of his orbit through the day, sometimes so deep in thought, thoughts I would be hard-pressed to describe if asked, so fleeting were they, that when I came upon him, I was often surprised. We exchanged little pleasantries or comments designed to keep informed about the lay of the land. I was used to these meetings and looked forward to them; one was utterly alone otherwise. It was good to hear the sound of another voice, rumbling and low, in contrast to the shrill, sad call of the white-throated sparrow, the hush of breeze, the clack of grasshopper or the rising croak of a frog and then frogs as the mating symphony rose and then died down. Even the frogs, yes.
Ortwin drove us deep into the contract site, back to the last several hectares, and left us with enough trays of container stock to plant double the area, an obvious ploy to get rid of overstock. He drove off, the ATV spluttering and whining, scaring off wildlife — the large but not the small variety. The bugs felt the noise as an intense vibration, which seemed to excite them even more. The heat had burned off most of the blackflies and mosquitoes; we contended with horseflies, deerflies and no-seeums, which swarmed or dive-bombed as per their own instinct. I no longer felt their penetrations; I was inured. But Willem swiped hopelessly at them while loudly bawling them out in Flemish.
The first thing I did when the last of the ATV dust settled and Ortwin was out of sight was hoist a tray of tree plugs onto my back and lumber into the forest with them. The undergrowth was green and thick and the trees I scattered there were undetectable. I made sure Willem saw this. I forced him to count some of these trees on his day tally; it would look suspicious to have such a huge sum on my plate.
I don’t know why you are doing this, Alma.
You want to cart all these out at the end of the day?
We could at least plant them in the forest.
And if the MNR sees you foraging about in the forest planting trees? Forget that. It’s not pragmatic.
It goes against the nature, he said.
Nature? I asked. What is nature? There is no nature anymore.
It was a beautiful day. The ground all around us was mercifully soft and fertile. We were in paradise, creamland. All we had to do was scrape the tiniest layer of grass from the earth to find topsoil of the finest quality. The trees went in like magic and I was tranced out. The little wrapped-up container-stock roots were easily poked in. Creamland! Race, race, my body removed itself and I was pure thought floating above the work. I hurtled forward, my body adrenal with the excitement of motion through space. It was as if I was planting all my trees simultaneously, they went in that fast. The gapes of earth sent luscious puffs of soil smells up into my nostrils as I shut them with my toe. I ran, sweat coming up in beads and rolling down my face. I did not bother to wipe this sweat away. I let it run in rivulets, felt it trickle down from my armpits and wick into my filth-encrusted cotton undershirt.
We took the outer edges of the field, and every so often I stood up, pulled my hair away from my face and scanned the territory for Willem. He was stooping or rising, our perspective on one another growing as the morning wore on. It was getting towards the end of the contract. I felt inclined to hurry, make that last pile of coin, increase my unemployment premium. The rush. Money. Tree. Money. Tree. I bent forward to the next microsite; there was no big picture. Willem and I sat together at lunch, sat on our treeplanting bags, wet soil drying on our fingers as we ate, drying under our nails. I peeled back the duct tape and examine the dimpled, pink skin of my fingers, like a child’s after a long bath. Willem had his shirt off. I noticed tiny, almost imperceptible extra nipples, six in all, lined up like an animal’s down his stomach, and, gesturing with my own strange skin, I mentioned this to him.
He drew his pinky from one to the next, connecting them like a dot-to-dot.
I was meant to be born to a dog, he said. An animal without thought or worry.
We didn’t talk much. The sun made us sleepy, and besides, we were tired. The night before there had been a party of sorts in the cookshack, and both of us had taken the opportunity to drink a few glasses of crappy wine, not enough to get drunk but enough to sap energy from the next day’s work. There was dancing. Clara turned up the volume on a blaster, some tune from the seventies with a deep pelvic rhythm, and suddenly everyone found themselves dancing.
“I Believe in Miracles.”
Karl poked his hands, slightly offbeat, toward the plastic roof and swung his middle-aged butt back and forth, bumping people on purpose. Osho watched from a corner as Marilene shook herself and laughed. He rose and moved toward her and began to dance, head and hair flying, eyes shut, conjuring some personal conglomeration of gods. He moved closer and closer to her and she did not avoid him. I slept fitfully, the heat making my tent into a dry sauna and the evening not cooling down enough to make much of a difference. I ripped the tarp off the tent roof, but already too much heat had been trapped. I tossed and turned.
I could hear Osho and his friends in the valley beyond my tent, chanting. Someone had bells and was jangling them. I dreamt of oxen and a hay wagon that became something else, a man and then a bear. Osho and Marilene were celebrating. It was interfering with my sleep, their bacchanal, their loud sexual reconciliation. It frustrated me no end. The heat, the moans of the others, the very life urging up around me in the bush irritated me. Waking up, I smelled the alcohol oozing up with my sweat.
Willem and I were now edged by a forest of silver birch trees, the leaves of which shuddered, the sun reflected off them. I had already planted one thousand trees, not including what I tossed, sacrificed to the forest, and I felt justified in taking my time eating my lunch. I opened an Oreo cookie and, with my teeth, pulled the vanilla icing from the wafer. I sucked on this, relishing the sweetness on my tongue as the wad of icing melted and finally slid down my throat. The sun was warm.
I am leaving soon, Willem said suddenly. I won’t be coming back, not soon, maybe never. Come with me. That cottage of your dreams. I will build it.
What? What about your girlfriend?
She’s not my girlfriend. She was my girlfriend but now she’s not.
Why are you leaving? I said. I had grown used to his lumbering form near me in the field, grown familiar with his body as it moved about around me. I had grown fond of him despite myself.
The ministry. They discovered I am working under false identity. It is to protect Ortwin. I am going home. Come. Come away with me. I really am liking you a lot.
I began to frown. And it was then that Willem moved his hand — the fingers of which were once, long ago, mangled by a chainsaw — moved it from his upper thigh, to my ear. And what began there ended in our lovemaking. I cannot say this was a complete surprise to me. I had been expecting something of the sort for some time. I had been waiting, creating, however inadvertently, the opportunity for this. It is impossible to describe the act of love and do it justice. It is either above or below vocabulary, freshly shocking that the union of two people is profound. What purpose would it serve to say his pinky gently followed the S-curve of my outer ear, working as a switch in turning on a circuit, and that my body flooded in anticipation? None. He tugged at the lobe and then went in behind the ear and, barely touching me, drew down the curve again and again, softly. His face was very close to mine and his eyes looked into my eyes for some sign that what he was doing was allowable, but with a slight worry evident in them, too, that even if it wasn’t, he might not be able to stop himself. His hair had grown since I first saw him. It hung around his face in matted, uncombed tufts, the ends brushing along my lips.
Your ears are very pretty, he said. You know, I can’t really stand this anymore.
I laughed, a short, surprised laugh that was more an exhalation than anything. He sat up and looked around, making sure we were alone and not likely to be disturbed. His hand ran up under my shirt and he pulled the cloth back.
Is it okay? he said. And then, Your nipples have little points. His hand was flat open on my belly, moving up and down with my breath.
I pulled him down by grabbing onto his hair. Our mouths meet in a slurry of wet, the cookie sweet between us, our tongues running along each other’s teeth, soft on hard, a precursor to what followed. His penis arched up, the glans poking up out of its skin. See? What can one say that will not taint the experience? Could one say darling metaphorical things: we consumed one another? Or bawdy things: hung like a stallion, twice as eager? We gathered each other in. I held his waist like so. He put his palm there. His thumb there. He groaned when he felt the wetness. I shimmied my clothes off; he watched as if amazed, as if he had never seen this performed before, this same dance, the ritual of surprise, of renewed anticipation, seen it a hundred times before with other women, on television, in the movies, in books or naughty magazines found in the attic. His skin was like my own, reminding me of me, and we urged each other on within the slow and fast pulse of our desire in the ancient game of empty and full. Willem stopped himself short. He was wild-eyed.
He said, Can I stay?
In Canada?
No, in you.
How can I describe it in a way that doesn’t diminish it? It was nothing. It was everything.
Ortwin seemed to sense our altered states when we returned to the crummy. He laughed in a particularly knowing way, huge and loud, and patted Willem on the back, his reason for doing so ambiguous. Sexual secrets were very hard to keep in a closed community. I felt Willem’s sperm sliding out of my vagina as the van bumped down the pitted clay logging road. I smelled ocean salt too as it mingled with the other smells in the crummy: the reek of people coming out of the woods, of soil drying, of dry urine and shit and pesticide and bug-dope, sweat, spit and soap — the stench of nature mixed with the smell of change. There was Karl’s breath too, his oppressive stare — the large yellow eyes of betrayal staring at the back of my head all the way home.
For one week, the point was not tree upon tree upon tree. It was open sky and fractured English and giddy happiness. Planting slowed to a near halt. Willem and I looked up from the bowers we created whenever the mood struck, we looked up from the little duff beds and wondered at the gorgeous low cumulus, the fragile blue sky and how it bore down on us. We stared out post-coital from the jutting debris of the slash heap that had just provided a wall, the necessary resistance to our rough acquiescence. We caught our breath and pointed up at a swirl of bird’s wings on the wind stream and we were content.
When do you leave?
I don’t want to talk.
No.
I wondered, even then, if our affection was buoyed by the reality of his departure. But when I suggested I come visit, he was not coy. We made plans together; we spoke of infinite futures. We looked forward. That week, time sped up. It was inevitable that it should as, in a way, it was timeless, a pocket in time, a subversion of all the banality one experiences when one is truly in the moment. If I may be permitted glibness, this was a fairy tale. This was outside of everything. We laughed when I recollected how ridiculous he seemed when I met him, but the fact was that he had not changed. I had. I had opened to him. And this opening was one I would quickly come to regret. Peer into any opening and see the abyss. A dark hole, a tunnel into the earth, shadowlands.
You will have your little house in Flanders, white paint and kantwerk curtains. The children will gather.
Papa, they will shout. Where is Papa?
I’ll come home smelling of forest and . . .
. . . and mansweat.
. . . and they will ask me about the creatures. And I will tell them about the little moles and the hedgehogs and when they are old enough they will come and work with me and . . .
. . . the house will have a woodstove that leaks a bit of smoke and we will always smell of ash and . . .
. . . yes.
Ortwin lent the camp ATV to Willem and off we went. It was a thrill to move so quickly through the dense air, against the insectarium, against the heaviness of one’s own body, a thrill to press myself in behind him and hold him, gain purchase on his body, tighter than necessary. We sped, the vehicle whipping us up whenever we hit roots and potholes in the old road. And then the clearing, the mine shaft pool. Even the inside of a weather-worn, decrepit, unhygienic hut can seem beautiful if one is in the right mood.
July 17. She was wearing a light blue man’s shirt, a well-tailored business shirt with the old collar taken off. I remember her very well as she climbed up into the van, her leather steel-toed boot, scarred and open at the laces, stepping up into the van, and there was an alteration in her. A lightness. The fairies had taken her, my grandmother would have said. She was gone.