CHAPTER 1

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ELENA REMEMBERED EVERYTHING. Not just the street names and the blackboard lessons and the number plates of every vehicle her parents had owned. She remembered the stories. There were stories everywhere: rolling out of people’s mouths, blowing in the summer dust, printed on the walls of the tiny village museum. She collected all of them, whole or in pieces, and she was sure there was a way to fit them together.

Mamma had to raise her voice—something she tried to avoid—to be heard. “Turn that down! You’ll damage your ears!”

They were on their way home from church, the three of them. Rob thumped his leather shoes on the tarmac while Mamma kept pace in her floral print dress and kitten heels. Elena trailed behind, shaking gravel out of her sandal. Rob removed his headphones to taunt Mamma. The tinny beats from his mixtape crackled out of the foam ear pads.

“I don’t have to listen to you anymore. I’m getting out of this dump.”

Rob always lost his temper on hot days. Sooner or later, he would boil over. He marched ahead of them with his thumb stuck out, kicking up dust that stuck to his sweating face, looking for vehicles heading out of town toward Stony Creek. The collared shirt Mamma bought for him two months ago was already tight around his shoulders. He was 14 and desperate to be his own man. Mamma dismissed him with a wave of her hand. She didn’t believe he’d really do it.

Her expression hardened when a pale blue truck appeared on the horizon. It wasn’t one they recognized. There was only one way in or out of Stapleton. (The old highway ended at the railway tracks.) No one new arrived in town except by mistake, or in Mamma’s mind, to do something nasty, like dump garbage or steal things.

“Roberto! Aspetti!”

Mamma couldn’t keep up with her son, especially in her church outfit. Her mouth opened into a little “o” when the truck’s indicator started flashing. It pulled over right in front of Rob’s outstretched arm and he addressed the open window as Mamma clip-clopped toward them as fast as she could. She pulled her lips up into her sort-of-smile, slid her shades up and latched onto Rob’s shoulders with a firm grip.

Bony, black-haired Frank leaned out of the window but Mamma showed no pleasure at the sight of a familiar face. Frank ran the Stapleton Inn and Mamma didn’t much like either of them.

Frank stared at Mamma a bit too long without speaking. Mamma was pretty, Elena knew that. Dad said Mamma could stop traffic (if there was any). Her hair was naturally dark like Elena’s, but she had highlights and layers done at the Stony Creek salon and people often commented on how she looked so fashionable. Mamma never appeared in public with what she called her “plain face”. Elena wanted people to think she was pretty too, but Mamma said 10 was too young for lipsticks and lash curlers.

Elena guessed Frank was older than Mamma but she couldn’t decide his actual age. Sometimes he giggled like a kid. He wore ripped jeans and tie-dyed t-shirts and she thought he cut his own hair because it was always shaggy and snarled at the back.

Frank stretched his palm out of the window toward Elena as she skipped up to the vehicle. “Gimme five.”

Beaming, she slapped his hand. Mamma was frowning but Elena liked him.

“New truck, Frank?” Mamma’s words were friendly but her voice was flat. That’s how she spoke when she didn’t want to.

“It was ... a couple decades ago.” He patted the door like it was his dog. “I bought it for parts.”

Elena had never seen Frank fix cars but he was always collecting new hobbies. She liked that about him. Whenever she saw him around town, he was fired up about a new project, or he’d picked up something unusual.

Frank flashed Rob an apologetic look. “I can’t drive you to Stony Creek. How ’bout I drive you all home instead?”

Rob and Elena both turned to Mamma, Rob wiping the beads of sweat from his forehead, Elena pressing her palms together as she begged. “Please!”

Mamma also found the heat unbearable yet today she had a shawl draped around her shoulders. Maybe she thought God would be offended by her bare, sweaty armpits.

“Thanks, but we’re nearly home.”

“Mom! Please!” Rob said, moaning.

Frank was still leaning out of the driver’s window. “It’s no trouble, Giulia.”

Mamma made a last-ditch attempt at a smile before turning away. Rob offered Frank one more desperate look. “Sorry, dude,” Frank said, stepping on the accelerator. Elena and Rob slowed to a crawl as they watched the truck stutter away. Mamma was right; home wasn’t that far but it seemed so much further now.

Every week on the way home from church, the three of them passed an abandoned graveyard. Only Elena paid any attention to it. It wasn’t visible without crossing the concrete barrier that separated the road from the steep slope, but she knew the old Chinese cemetery was down there. It sat on a scrap of land just above the river. Dad had cautioned her there was no easy, or safe, way to reach it. The trail that cut along the eroding base of the riverbank was completely overgrown.

Dad had told her about the cemetery after he swaggered into the house one morning swinging two dead grouse by their ankles. Mamma shooed him outside. Elena followed.

“It ain’t easy getting down there but the birds sure like it,” he explained as Elena brushed her fingers against the soft feathers.

“Isn’t it spooky?”

“Nah. Grouse don’t care about ghosts. They like the gravel. They swallow it to help them digest their food.”

Dad said the gravestones in that cemetery were marked with fancy dashes, that’s how the Chinese wrote. They’d come during the gold rush and Elena wanted to know where they’d all gone. Almost everyone she knew in Stapleton was white and the rest were mostly Native. Dad told her that Stapleton’s Chinatown burned down ages ago. Dad wasn’t from Stapleton and didn’t care much about history, but he’d do his best to find out about things when she asked. He drove her down to the gas station one afternoon and they bought cans of orange pop and drank them at the picnic bench beside a Moments In History signboard for the visitors that never came. She thought about how Chinatown’s ashes had been absorbed into the ground, leaving no trace. The sign didn’t explain how their cemetery ended up down by the river, so close it was practically falling in, but now those souls were trapped on the edge of their nowhere town forever.

Mamma strode off down the highway, determined to prove how easy it was to walk home in 30-degree heat. Elena hesitated beside the barrier that came up to her hips and casually examined the tiny bumps and grooves on its surface. She glanced ahead to see if Mamma had noticed. She hadn’t.

Straddling the concrete barrier was easy enough, even in the pale yellow dress that ended just below her knees, but something shifted when her jelly sandals sank into the coarse earth on the other side. She had moved from feeling safe to being aware, and she could feel every speck of her being twitch. She was like a small animal testing the air for danger, her heart pumping hard in her chest.

Tiptoeing on the cusp of the slope, she could still only make out the shapes of the headstones. From up here, there were no visible markings, no inscriptions written in a foreign language. She shuffled her right foot half an inch further and squinted at the stones as hard as she could.

“Elena!”

Mamma screamed. Elena swung around, too quickly. She slipped out of balance and her heart hit her throat.

The scree shifted rapidly beneath her feet, rushing around her ankles and carrying her with it as though she had been caught in a river current. She dug her heels in and it slowed her a little. Her shaky legs gave in about two-thirds of the way down and her back hit the dirt. She cried out as sharp edges shaved her skin.

When she first hit the ground, all she could hear was the river, noisier than she thought it to be. Then Mamma’s screams rang down from the highway.

Elena’s body throbbed with the aches of a thousand scrapes and twists. Her palms pulsated as she pushed them into the dust and sat upright. She craned her neck and looked up through the dusty clouds of her descent. There was the imprint of her journey written in the scree—light where she slid, heavy and compacted where she had stomped into it.

Rob stepped gingerly onto the top of the slope. “You alright?” His voice squeaked under the pressure of his breaking vocal cords. “Yeah,” Elena called back. Beside him, their trembling mother had come as close to the edge as she dared, which wasn’t very far at all. She kept one hand on the low barrier.

“I’m okay, Mom.”

“Stay there!” Mamma shouted. She reached her other hand out to Rob but he found his own way back onto solid ground.

Elena curled up into her bruises, bloodied skin and self pity, wrapped in dull brown cotton that was supposed to be yellow. The strap around her left ankle had snapped and one purple jelly sandal lay broken at the base of the slide.

As the shock subsided, she remembered where she was. She pulled the remaining sandal off her right foot, hauled herself up and shook off some of the residue that clung to her dress and skin. Around her were small grey stones with symbols that ran up and down in black or white. She could see them clearly now that she was actually down in the place, covered in its dirt. The markings of people who’d lived there once. Dad was right; it wasn’t spooky. It was sad.

Stapleton’s other graveyard was still in use. It also had a river view but it was part of the village. A row of houses stood between it and Main Street but one of the grand willows was visible from the post office. The Stapleton Cemetery was well cared-for; mown grass shaded by huge trees. People left colourful bouquets on those stones.

There were no manicured trees to admire here. Yellow and brown grasses had overtaken the dirt between the grave markers. Sagebrush and taller, spindly bushes took root near the plateau’s edge, then spread across one side. Somewhere in there was the overgrown trail Dad had mentioned, running parallel to the highway.

Elena could hear the water but she wanted to see it. She grimaced as she limped across the graveyard and pushed her way through the sprawling bushes until she could see the wide, bluish-brown river a few feet below. She found a large rock to perch on and listened to the water, her aches pounding away at her thoughts. A salmon jumped. It flew into the air and re-entered the water in the next instant, barely making a sound.

A short distance upstream, men were waiting to catch salmon just like that one. Every August, they camped under blue tarpaulins north of the village where the river narrowed and the sockeye were easier to seize from the violent water. The fishermen stood on the rocks and used nets with long poles to lift out the thrashing fish. The carcasses were split open and hung to dry on wooden beams, the bright red meat interrupted by lines of pale skin where they’d been sliced widthways at regular intervals. Elena had seen the men at work only from a distance—Dad said that was their land, and their way of doing things. They didn’t need little girls interfering. It didn’t stop her from being curious.

“What happens to the salmon that escape the nets? Are they free?”

“They are until the bears swipe ’em up.”

“What if they get past the bears?”

“They make their way upstream to lay their eggs.”

“Then what?”

Dad hesitated. “Then they die.”

“All of them?” Elena’s mouth had gaped in horror.

“It’s a cycle,” he said, trying to reassure her. “It’s natural.”

They would die anyway, even if they escaped the bears and the nets. It didn’t seem right for nature to be so unkind.

A sound cut across the noise of the river, like the crunch of a footstep on dry grass, but it was difficult to make it out against the roar of the rushing water. Her spine shivered. She crept off her rock and wriggled through the bushes. Turning toward the graves, she caught a shadow of movement. Then nothing.

She must have imagined it. This cemetery had been still for many years, since the time people referred to as “long ago.” It wasn’t a spooky place. The grouse didn’t think so.

Another noise; her body tensed. This sound was worse, because it had a weight to it that couldn’t just be part of her imagination, and it wasn’t the light crackle of leaves disturbed by a mouse or the flutter of a bird’s wings. It belonged to a larger animal, like a coyote or a bear. She grabbed a small rock from the dust and held it tightly. The headstones were much too small to conceal her, so she squeezed into the bushes near the water’s edge, hoping that the animal wouldn’t hear her against the river’s clamour. She stood so still she barely even breathed.

Swoosh, swoosh, then a pause. She listened to it a few times until she realized it was too consistent for a wild animal. As she peered across the cemetery, fat sticks rose and fell in the brush beyond. Someone was clearing a path.

Ken was a big man who might have been strong once but was now mostly soft. He cleared the bushes and loped toward her until he was close enough to scoop her up. Ken wasn’t family but Dad said he was like a brother. Brothers that looked not at all alike.

Rob emerged from the trail behind Ken and dropped his path-clearing stick. The sweat from his efforts stuck his floppy hair to the sides of his face. Rob looked a lot like Dad. They both had square heads and small brown eyes and a few pale freckles on their cheeks. Elena had the freckles too but her hair was dark like Mamma’s, not dusty like theirs. Dad’s hair was always shaved, except in the few photos they had of him as a kid.

Rob heaved a big sigh. She could tell she’d scared him but she didn’t say anything. He’d only deny it. She had Mamma’s green eyes and short stature and he had all her worries. He must have sprinted to the village to get Ken. Dad would have had to drive all the way from the mill.

Mamma was waiting at the point where the freshly beaten path met the road. Flustered, she asked Elena so many times if she’d hit her head that Elena wondered if she had. Mamma turned over her arms and legs, examining all the scratches. She eventually decided nothing was serious enough to disturb the doctor on a Sunday.

“I’ll drive you to the café,” Ken said. “I’ve got a pretty good first aid kit.”

The potholes jolted Elena’s strained muscles and made her wince. No doubt Ken was trying to distract her by ramping up the radio, which was playing Alan Jackson’s Gone Country. Elena had seen him on TV in his cowboy hat and blonde hair and blue overalls. Ken knew all the words and sang them with extra twang, just to make her laugh. His scrawny blonde ponytail switched back and forth as he bobbed his head with the music. That’s what he and Dad had in common. They both made her laugh.

Elena was perched on one of Ken’s plastic-wrapped chairs, reeking of pink antiseptic when Mary wobbled in. She threw Elena a suspicious glare as Mamma applied even more ointment to her scrapes. Mary sat down and dropped a dollar on the table. She didn’t look that old, but she moved as slowly as the oldest old people in town and talked like there was nothing she hadn’t seen before. Ken brought over the pot of coffee, poured her a cup and picked up the coin. The mounted fan clicked and whirred as Mary dabbed her forehead with wispy napkins from the dispenser.

“Getting into trouble, are you?” Mary barely turned her head, so it took Elena a moment to realize she was being addressed. Mamma responded for her.

“Too much trouble, Mary. Her head’s always in the clouds.”

“In my day we pounded it out of ’em.” Mary gave Elena a stern look. Elena shrank back in her chair but Mamma just smiled.

Mary glared at Elena’s bloody knees, scrutinizing the damage. “How did you get those?”

“I went to see the Chinese cemetery and ...”

“How the hell did you get down there?”

Mamma looked up but didn’t say anything.

“I fell,” Elena said quietly.

“From the road?”

She nodded. Mary shook her head.

“Dad goes there to shoot grouse sometimes.”

“I bet he does.”

“He went down there once, Elena. Don’t exaggerate.” Mamma dabbed at her stings with a little more force, making her squirm.

“Who’s buried there?” Elena asked.

Mary leaned back in a pose that pushed her large stomach into the table. She was the village historian, in charge of the local heritage society and a room in the village hall that was referred to as the Stapleton Museum.

“Those bones are old ... but they ain’t that old,” she replied. “The first Chinese migrants would’ve had their bones sent back to China. The folks buried in our cemetery were most likely miners, labourers and small business owners who lived here when Stapleton’s Chinatown was established. The Chinese mined a lot of jade in this area. They figured out it was here before the Europeans did.”

Mamma got up with a handful of dirty tissues and Band-Aid peels. She disappeared behind the counter to tidy up the first aid kit. Mamma always seemed to feel better when she tidied things, regardless of the reason for the mess.

Mamma had different glosses and powders for every occasion but most women in Stapleton wore makeup as though it had become part of their faces; the same look every day. Mary wore very soft pink lipstick that gleamed against the white ceramic mug as she took another sip of coffee.

“Can you read the writing on the stones?”

“My grandparents were Japanese.”

Elena took that to mean no but wasn’t completely sure. Mary was Asian but without an accent, just like Mamma was Italian without sounding Italian. Mary’s straight black hair didn’t quite reach her shoulders and she wore billowy blouses, sometimes with shawls and brooches.

“Why did they send their bones back to China?”

“So their families could pray for them. You gotta take care of the ones who came before you, even after they’re gone.”

That made sense. Elena hated being forgotten about. She had fought back tears from beneath her tea towel headdress when Dad didn’t show up for the nativity play.

“If you don’t take care of them when they die, they’ll come back and haunt you,” Mary said.

Elena’s eyes widened: “But the people in the cemetery ...” Mary leaned in and lowered her voice. “Nobody’s been praying for those bones, have they?” Elena thought back to the overgrown trail that Ken and Rob had to cut their way through to reach her, and the strange noise she’d heard near the gravestones. Dad would have told her if it was haunted, wouldn’t he?

“The Chinese call them hungry ghosts. They’ve got long, skinny necks because nobody’s been feeding them. In the seventh month of the Chinese calendar, the hungry ghosts come into our world, looking for trouble.”

“When is the seventh month?” she asked timidly.

“It’s right now.”

Elena’s eyes and ears were locked onto Mary’s words. “Stay away from that cemetery,” the older woman said.

“What cemetery?” Logan burst in, skateboard tucked under one arm. Elena had been so engrossed in Mary’s tale she hadn’t noticed him enter the café. Her best friend had a new haircut; bleached tips ready for the start of grade 5. The hint of intrigue lit up his blue eyes. He was small for his age, like she was, but his energy always put him front and centre.

Logan pointed at Elena’s bloody shins and she opened her mouth to tell him all about it but Mary set her cup down loudly and gave Logan a stare that sent him on his way to the ice cream counter.

Mary shook her head silently, but Elena would tell Logan everything at the first opportunity. The ghost in the cemetery would become their mystery to unravel.

Elena loved her house. They lived close to the river where the land dropped swiftly almost to water level. It was a mobile home with a yard that ran around all four sides of it. Mamma called it their paper house; she worried they would lose it in strong winds or a forest fire or a flood. Mamma said that, when she was little, she lived in a house with stone walls. She said houses like that lasted forever, but Dad wasn’t impressed. “Why didn’t you stay there, then?” Mamma went quiet and disappeared into the bathroom.

Dad bought 14 Juniper Drive because he fell in love with the view. He reminded Elena of that often, proudly, as he surveyed the land beyond them. The windows at the back of the house looked onto the river and the hilly banks of the reserve. A few hundred people lived on the Stapleton Reserve, but from the windows of their living room Elena found it hard to imagine that anyone lived there at all. The reserve housing was over a ridge further up the hill, so they never had to look at the town, and the town residents never had to look at them.

Elena was curled up next to Mamma, numbed by the television, when Dad came home. Her aches had diminished to dull throbs and the whole room stank of Mamma’s healing cream.

Just the sound of Dad opening the door brought his warmth into the house. Elena could hear him in the hallway, taking off his jacket and throwing his keys onto the table. “Elena is grounded again,” Mamma said, her eyes still on the screen. “You remember why we moved here, Curtis? You told me it would be safer for the kids.” Dad didn’t respond.

“Go tell your dad what you did today.”

Elena unfolded her body and limped awkwardly into the hallway. Her legs had seized up while she was sitting. She knew how he’d look before she saw him; tired, annoyed. She didn’t want to see his disappointment, so she stared at the ugly linoleum—swirly patterns in greys and browns. He’d already removed his heavy boots so she focused on the scruffy bottoms of his jeans as he approached. He came down to her level and cradled his big hands around hers. She brought her eyes up to his.

“Elena”, he said softly, “why do you have to get me into so much trouble?”

“Sorry,” she whispered.

He cupped her chin gently and brushed his thumb against her cheek, just under a prominent scratch. The delicate links of his gold necklace poked out of his t-shirt, and she hoped that he’d pick her up and pull her to him like he did when she was little.

“What did you do this time?”

He almost laughed when she told him. He probably would have if Mamma weren’t listening from the next room. “At least she didn’t get hit by a car on the highway,” he said, calling through to her. “That’s what they call an accident in Vancouver.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Mamma said. Dad went into the living room and gave Mamma a kiss and she didn’t seem so angry anymore.

“I told Mary you shot grouse in the Chinese cemetery.”

Elena’s betrayal of her dad gnawed at her more than the guilt of having traumatized her mother. The two of them kicked back on rusty lawn chairs with cracked plastic straps, Dad swigging from a can, relaxed. Mamma drank out of mugs and glasses but Dad always drank out of long cans. Sometimes they slowed him down and he fell out of time and Mamma snapped at him, but that didn’t happen very often. He and Elena watched the yellow remains of the sun glint on the shadowy river as it sank behind the reserve hills.

Elena shuffled uncomfortably. “Mary was angry you shot those grouse.”

Dad chuckled to himself.

She had more to say, but Dad scrunched his emptied can with one thick hand, laid his head back and closed his eyes. He didn’t like to discuss the ins and outs of everything.