CHAPTER 15

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THE CHILDREN GAGGED at the dead bodies. Their odour crushed all the wonder and anticipation Miss Meyer had been building on the bus ride there. Sand mixed with broken flesh; red and white scales ripped up, partially eaten bodies without heads, heads without bodies, rotting.

Miss Meyer apologized. They had come too late. Most of the salmon had already battled their way upriver, laid their eggs and breathed their last. Riverbanks of dead fish. It wasn’t what Elena had imagined when Miss Meyer announced that they would be taking a school trip to see the salmon run. There were no great shoals of fish swimming against the current, breaking through the surface, jumping and splashing. They only saw one or two fish alive; the dawdlers, the latecomers. She wondered if they could sense the dead ones, and if they knew what was coming.

“Who knows what colour a sockeye salmon would be if we saw one in the ocean?”

All the kids had covered their mouths and noses with their sleeves. No one wanted to unmask themselves to speak. Elena had stopped answering questions altogether because for the first time in her life she didn’t want any more attention. The kids at school saw her differently now that Dad was suspected of doing something terrible. The longer no one could explain where he was, the guiltier people seemed to think he must be.

“They’d be silvery-blue,” Miss Meyer answered cheerfully. “They turn bright red when they return to the rivers to spawn.”

Her voice became tinny when she strained it, scraping their ears with her insistence that they listen.

“The wonderful thing about nature is the way it adapts. The salmon have different needs during different stages of their lives and they’ve learned to change to survive.”

This didn’t look like survival to Elena. It looked like the exact opposite of survival.

Nathan, the only kid not affected by the stench of death, hopped over to one of the male corpses, identifiable by its humped back and hooked mouth. He bent down to pick it up.

“And we will start to see changes in our own community, as we adapt to our new ... No, Nathan! It’s dirty! Put it down!”

Nathan bobbed it up and down as if it were talking. The birds had pecked out its eyes. A couple of the boys laughed hysterically and the girls all jumped back in disgust.

“Put it down, Nathan!” He did, and then he shoved his fishy hands at Kathryn’s face. She screamed.

Elena missed Logan. He would’ve picked up a rotting fish, but he would’ve thought of something funny to say as he bobbed it up and down. It worried her deeply that he might believe what the others were saying; that it was her dad’s fault his dad was dead.

Elena fell asleep on the bus ride home. She had the whole seat to herself because no one would sit next to her. She leaned her head against the window pane, the buzzing glass numbing her thoughts. Her eyelids drooped a few times before they closed.

She woke abruptly, a pungent smell in her nostrils and something tickling her chin and a weight against her chest. A fish tail was poking out of her pink-collared windbreaker, its body bulging under the zip. She shot to her feet and pulled off her jacket. The rotting salmon dropped to the floor. Just the sight of it made her sick. Nathan laughed and kicked it down the bus. Her sweatshirt was damp where the wet, slimy carcass had been. She pulled it off, trying not to feel the dampness against her face.

“Oh my God! That’s so gross!” Kathryn squealed while the other kids snickered.

Elena looked down at the smaller dark spot on her t-shirt. She’d have to wear it all the way home. Miss Meyer marched to the back of the bus and told them how appalled she was, but that was all she did.

Elena tried putting her windbreaker back on, but she couldn’t do it, so she sat back in her seat, overwhelmed by the smell, and she turned the outside of the jacket over herself like a blanket. Kids up front popped their heads over their seats to gawk at her. She turned away and stared out the window.

Mamma threw Elena’s fishy clothes in the machine and asked her what Miss Meyer had done about the situation.

“Nothing,” Elena told her.

“I should go down there and talk to the principal.”

Elena knew she wouldn’t. It was alright though. Elena only wanted her to be angry. That was good enough. She had showered and put on fresh clothes and at home at least no one would be mean to her.

Rob stormed in through the front door, threw off his sneakers and went straight into his room. Elena looked over at Mamma for an explanation. “Ashley dumped him last night,” she said softly. “He’s taken it quite hard. Don’t tease him about it, please?” Yesterday, she might have done. Today, she wasn’t in the mood.

There was a knock at the door and Elena went to answer it. Brandon. They weren’t expecting him. He was one of those people that just appeared.

“Hey Elena. Is your mom home?”

Elena turned around and yelled down the hallway. “Mom! Brandon’s here.” She stared back at him, lingering in the doorway. He filled the whole space; she couldn’t see the world behind him. He hadn’t seemed so big last time he was standing there, bent over and coughing his lungs out.

Elena stared at him while they waited for Mamma. “Do you have nightmares? About the fire?”

Brandon lost his smile. “People usually ask me about my arm. Do you have nightmares about it?”

“Sometimes. Do you like peanut butter marshmallow squares?”

Someone had left a box of them on the doorstep. No note. It had cheered Mamma up for the whole morning because it meant at least one person was on their side. Nobody left baking on the doorsteps of people they hated.

Brandon softened his voice like a woman’s and brushed his hands delicately against his big stomach. “I love peanut butter marshmallow squares, but I’m watching my figure.”

Elena giggled.

“My girlfriend put me on a diet. You think that’s funny?”

Elena nodded. She looked at him, seriously.

“Why didn’t you stay with my dad?”

Brandon’s expression grew heavy. “He needed a tool to fix a piece of equipment. He went to get it, and a minute later, the explosion happened. When I got up, I couldn’t see him. I thought he’d got out but by the time I got outside he wasn’t there. That’s why I came to your place. I was hoping he’d be here.”

“When do you think he will come back?” she asked.

Brandon became awkward. Mamma interrupted before he could answer. She was still cheerful. She obviously hadn’t heard what they were talking about.

“Hi Brandon. You’re looking well. How’s your arm?”

“Much better, thanks.”

Brandon looked down at Elena and up again at Mamma. He lowered his voice as he spoke. “I just wanted to let you know ... the cops came by to talk to me again.”

“Elena, why don’t you go outside for a bit?” Her voice was hollow. It made Elena nervous, but she did what she was told. She squeezed by Brandon and stepped into the yard as they went inside and shut her out.

Mamma had just been cleaning, another sign that she was feeling better about things. When Mamma cleaned, she opened up all the windows to get rid of the chemical smells. Elena crept around the house and dropped under the window-sill. She could just about hear them. Brandon was speaking.

“They forced me to say I was confused about my original statement.”

“But you’re his alibi. He wouldn’t have had enough time after he left you to get across the building, set off an explosion and escape.”

“They’re calling me a liar. They’re saying my story doesn’t add up, so either he wasn’t with me all that time and I got confused because of the trauma or I’m covering for him, and that’s a serious criminal offence. So I told them I got confused. I’m sorry, Giulia.”

“But now he’s got no defence.”

“My girlfriend’s pregnant. I can’t go to jail. No one’s going to believe me over the cops.”

The room went quiet.

“Thanks for telling me,” Mamma says finally. “Congratulations on the baby. That’s wonderful news.”

“I’m so sorry, Giulia.”

There was silence and Elena realized he was leaving. She rushed to the back of the house before she could be seen. Something occurred to her as she ran. It wasn’t that everybody hated them; some people were just afraid of being associated with them because of what other people might think. It was like their family had a contagious disease and everyone was staying away in case it spread. Everybody else felt safer that way.

October girl. She woke up 11 years old. She thought about what it was like to be 11 as she padded to the bathroom, took a shower and picked out her clothes for the day. The skin around her nipples was much fatter than it used to be. Mamma got her a bra a few months back and she still had trouble pulling together the tiny clasp at the back. She was growing, but she’d been doing that since forever and she was still shorter than the other girls. She knew she wasn’t going to be beautiful, not like Kathryn. Kathryn was the tallest girl in their class and she had crimped blonde hair. Hannah said Kathryn had her period already. Kathryn’s dad was a foreman at the mill. They went to California on vacation. She had a dance party for her last birthday.

Mamma said it was best not to have a birthday party this year, what with everything that was going on. People had a lot “on their plates.” Money was tight, that’s why Mamma had sold Dad’s flashy TV and plugged in the old one he’d left in the shed. The picture wasn’t as nice but it still worked. Some of Mamma’s jewellery was missing from her dresser, Elena had noticed, and her dark roots were beginning to show where she parted her hair. All of it was temporary. Everything would be back to normal soon. Her twelfth birthday would be extra special.

Elena’s tenth birthday had been different. She had a party at the rec centre and Mamma got hot dogs and cakes and cookies. Almost the entire class showed up. Dad put up balloons and banners and played Michael Jackson songs. Mamma said she was getting too old for all that now anyway, wasn’t she? Elena looked at herself in the mirror, at her older, 11-year-old face, and thought maybe Mamma was right.

Elena walked down to the park and on to Main Street. Mamma was finally letting her do things on her own again, as long as she knew where she was going. Elena tried to imagine how it looked when Chinatown was there, from the Pharmacy out to the fields where Mary had told her it would’ve been. A fire came and took it all away. If the fire kept coming, what would be left?

Her thoughts were broken by the familiar sound of giggling. “Was she talking to herself?” she heard one girl whisper. They were much bigger than her, around Rob’s age. Three girls.

An older voice called her name from across the street. Mary was making her way slowly across the road. The girls lost interest.

“I’m going for coffee,” Mary said. “Are you coming?”

Elena had orange soda. Mary paid for it. They sat in the window and Mary read her paper while Elena stared at all the passers-by.

“It’s my birthday today,” Elena said.

“Happy Birthday. How old are you?”

“Eleven.”

“Did you get any good presents?”

“Not really. But Christmas is coming soon.”

“Christmas is two months away.”

Mary returned to her newspaper.

“What are you going to do at Christmas?”

Mary ruffled her paper, but she didn’t look up. “We usually visit my husband’s family in Stony Creek.”

Elena didn’t see Mr. Mary very often. She didn’t even know his name. He liked fishing. Dad would ask him if the fish were biting every time they passed him on the street. He never joined Mary for coffee at Ken’s.

“Are you going to have turkey?”

“No. My sister-in-law is vegetarian.”

“Why?”

“She likes to ruin Christmas.”

Mary turned the page awkwardly, flattening the paper and refolding the seam.

Elena did her best to prolong the conversation. “Why do they make newspapers so big? They could make them like magazines.”

“I don’t know.”

Elena looked at Mary looking at her. Mary was one of the only people in town who didn’t try to avoid her. Mary was different. She never worried about what other people thought.

“Were there any kids at the ranch when you lived there?”

“No. It was just Bruce and his wife. Their kids had grown up and moved away. That’s why he needed my dad’s help.”

“Who were you friends with then?”

“I kept to myself mostly. I went to the local school after the war, but it’s hard to change people’s minds, once they think about you a certain way.”

Elena went quiet.

“You’ll make other friends, Elena. You don’t need ones that are easy to lose.”

Mary stared at her again. “I’ve got a couple of things I need to do at the museum. Do you think you could help me?”

Mary unlocked the museum door. It had its own side entrance. Elena peered into the display cases with thin glass panels that moved a fraction when touched. “Last thing I need is to clean your fingerprints off everything,” Mary said. Elena took her paws off the glass. Thin strips of printed text with descriptions and dates sat next to every object. There was a set of scales once owned by a Chinese herbalist, berry-picking baskets, a typewriter used by a former editor of the Stapleton Herald and a sluice box that had sieved out tiny chunks of gold from the river sludge. It was in much better shape than the one she’d seen rotting in the creek.

Photographs filled the gaps; rifles and hats and wooden huts and wide-open spaces; men who looked worn like rocks with beards they could carry nests in. They were all doing things; building, mining, fishing and their lives seemed to fit them just fine.

“Was Stapleton better back then?”

“Different. I don’t know about better.”

Elena followed Mary to her desk at the back of the room. “Sit down.” She moved some papers out of the way, fished a key from her desk drawer and unlocked a display case. She removed a few metal tools and placed them on the desk.

“Be careful. The edges are sharp.”

Elena picked up a set of pliers; they looked just like Dad’s, but they were heavier and there wasn’t any plastic on the handles.

“Would you want to have your teeth pulled out with those?”

Elena squirmed and put the pliers down. “No. Why do you keep them?”

“Everything in this room has a story. It tells us a little bit about who we were and who we are. These tools were donated by the grandchildren of Stapleton’s first dentist. He was a black man who came up from California during the gold rush.”

Elena watched how carefully Mary put the gruesome tools away, as if those hunks of metal might smash into thousands of tiny pieces. Then their story would be lost.

Mary showed her a lace tablecloth brought over by a German immigrant and a set of silverware from Holland. She pointed at a photograph of a local ranch and told her it was started by a Mexican mule packer. It was the Mexicans who introduced alfalfa to BC, she said, but Elena wasn’t sure what alfalfa was. “Cows and hippies eat it,” Mary replied. She pulled out a Book of Common Prayer with ivory pages marred by brown age spots and a smell like old curtains. Elena was allowed to touch that one; it wasn’t that old or precious. She stopped on a random page and flicked through pieces of Psalm 51: “Wash me through and through from my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin.” Church words. They were always difficult.

Elena discovered a large tape recorder perched on a table behind the displays. “We use that sometimes for group visits,” Mary explained. Elena inspected it. She pushed down the chunky play button. An old man’s voice crackled out; deep as tree roots, old as stone, and his words made more sense than the book of dusty prayers.

The cow boss sent his boys out

With the last of the snow.

He’d seen some wild hosses;

“Winter-weary,” he said, “they’ll be slow.”

The boys rode through the timbers.

Quiet as night, they set their trap.

They rung around those hosses,

Bein’ sure to leave no gap.

Bill Hitchens went and done it.

He came round much too wide.

Left a big hole by the timbers

For them hosses to run and hide.

The cow boss stomped and cussed and spit.

Not one hoss to break and sell.

He asked how they’d let ’im down,

And the boss looked hard at Bill.

Now, Bill he was the youngest.

Like them broncs, tough to train.

The boss preferred his brother John;

Not as strong, but twice his brains.

Bill quivered, “Sorry boss,”

Sweat drippin’ from his brow,

And John stepped up beside him,

Brothers, even now:

“Boss you should’ve seen it.

It really ain’t his fault.

Those weren’t no reg’lar hosses,

That you can trap before they bolt.

“We set ’em up just perfect,

We thought we had the herd.

But when we rode towards ’em,

They just up and flew, like birds.”

Elena liked it. Families stuck together; that’s what the old poem meant. She imagined the horses, careering towards the cowboys and then heaving their hooves up and paddling up through the air like it was water. She wanted to be just like the horses in that poem and fly up high where the land looked beautiful and all the people became very, very small. She’d be a bald eagle; so grand that the people would look up and admire her as she soared over their heads. It was then that she saw it; a solution. They could live on a ranch, just like Mary’s family had, and Dad could work there too when he came back, so he wouldn’t have to deal with the mean people in town. It would be peaceful for them there, just like flying away.

“They barbeque wild horses round here.”

“No, they don’t!”

“Yes, they do! The ranchers don’t like them scaring their horses so they shoot them and make burgers and invite their neighbours over for a barbeque.”

Rob sat back with an ugly smirk. He wasn’t supposed to be that way, not now. She hated the way he put her down when they were supposed to stick together.

Stapleton’s restaurant reduced its hours to Saturdays and Sundays only. The notice pinned to the door began: To our dear friends and supporters ...

Ken murmured something about having to write a sign like that himself soon. “Problem is, people haven’t got any money to spend,” he said. Elena told him she didn’t care because she knew, now, that he didn’t care about her family. Ken did something very strange. He started to go pink. Mamma almost choked on her coffee. “Elena, don’t you dare take this out on Ken!” Elena had tried to explain to her that Ken knew something they didn’t but Mamma wasn’t listening.

The FOR SALE signs began popping up overnight, it seemed. Only one house actually sold and it didn’t belong to any of the redundant mill workers. Mrs. Dubov, their next-door neighbour, was the owner. Mamma said her kids forced her to sell it for almost nothing to a retired man from Stony Creek. Their new neighbour didn’t seem to like people much. He ignored Elena’s frequent greetings.

Mrs. Dubov’s kids dumped her into a seniors’ home. “Poor woman.” Mamma shook her head.

Mrs. Dubov had been proud of her home. The lawn was immaculate. Her roses drew compliments and the miniature hedge around the front was perfectly trimmed. Around the back, facing the river, she had a table and chair set with floral cushion pads and a hummingbird feeder. Elena went over there sometimes to watch the hummingbirds. Mrs. Dubov didn’t seem to mind.

Her family gutted her place so the quiet Stony Creek man could move in. Most of it went into a huge container in her driveway. Elena imagined the bears at the dump chewing her grassy green carpet and floral curtains. She hoped they would enjoy Mrs. Dubov’s treasures.