SORTING AND ARRANGING, preparing and restoring; the artifacts begin to fill the small room I’ve set aside for preparing them. More tea towels arrive, immaculately laundered, their embroidered proverbs faded but perfectly stitched. And more quilts, a cedar cape from an elderly storekeeper who once took it in trade for tinned milk, a wedding dress made in a remote logging camp for a cook who was marrying a faller and sent up by steamship, a beaded purse, beautiful cotton sheets with fields of wildflowers delicately knotted and feather-stitched along an eyelet border, needlepoint pillow covers, sweaters knitted out of the rough, unwashed wool so beloved of those working in the weather because of its ability to hold in warmth and shed water, baby dresses smocked and pleated, more samplers, including one stitched by a child, with a log cabin overlooked by a sombre moon and a whimsical alphabet. I think of the hands, all the hands, stitching and knitting and folding and smoothing, hands shaping as they cut and turned the fabrics, fitting to bodies, adjusting, by daylight and lamplight. In this room, I seem to be assisted by ghosts as I make my entries, plan and arrange, their hands palpable but unseen, a weight on my own as I fold and smooth.
July passed in the usual way, William attending to the cattle, Jenny to the children and garden, Margaret between them and useful to both. Nicholas Byrne returned to Spences Bridge to work with Mr. Teit and sent a letter:
It is hot here, the sides of the canyon are like oven walls, but the orchards are lovely and green. I like to walk among the trees at dawn while the sprinklers are going. Everything feels cool and alive. I’ve seen my first rattlesnake. It was reclining in a box of Mrs. Smith’s peaches, easily four feet long and with an extraordinary rattle. It looked as though it was sleeping, but then it flicked its tongue in our direction. I’ll never forget the odour of it mixed with the perfume of ripe peaches. The man who helps with the irrigation removed it from the crate with a stick and cut off its head. It was fascinating to touch the snake, minus its head, of course, and to discover how dry the skin was. I expected it to be slimy, or damp, at least. I could smell it on my hands for some time after. There has been so much to do, both with Mr. Teit and in getting my bearings in this area.
A fellow took me to see the devastation left behind after a mountain slide last year. Apparently the river was completely dammed after a side of the mountain came down and landed on the Indian village across the river. A train was about to pass through but luckily stopped in time. Passengers on the train saw people and animals being swept along in the torrent of water and mud but couldn’t do anything to help. I think that would be terrible beyond imagining. But you must know of this landslide, I’m sure. I’ve met the new chief, Charles Walkem, and have found him to be a very genial fellow, very keen to rebuild and prosper. He introduced me to the woman who makes baskets, and she is a lot like your grandmother, although I don’t think her baskets are quite so fine. She has told me lots of stories, one about a sort of war between fishes and another about Grizzly Bear’s grandchild. Each evening I scramble up the mountain above the Murray Creek and look down at the town, with its rivers meeting and rushing down to the Canyon. Once I came back down with a herd of bighorn sheep, and I was amazed at their agility, running down the gravelly slope while I was trying to find a toehold that wouldn’t slide away under me.
How are you? I think of you always, imagining you riding your horse along that lovely river. I will come back as soon as I’m able to.
Reading the letter, Margaret remembered the news of the landslide coming to them last year from Spences Bridge. One of her grandmother’s cousins had married into the Cook’s Ferry band and had attended service in the new Anglican church. Walking home after the service, the group she was with saw the water rushing their way, and they scrambled to higher ground. Those who had lingered at the church, those who had remained in their houses, and children who were playing by the river were washed away. Margaret’s grandmother had been very sad at the news and told her that some believed the tribe was doomed to extinction and might see this as part of the end. An entire group of wintering Thompsons had been killed by smallpox years earlier, very near to where the Cook’s Ferry slide occurred. Grandmother Jackson felt it must have been an unlucky place to build a village. Yet Margaret had been to Spences Bridge with her father and had stood on the banks of the Thompson River where the Nicola swirled into it, seen the remnants of fish camps all along the shore, even a few kikulis on higher ground. She thought the location was beautiful. Mountains rising from either side of the canyon, threaded with creeks and waterfalls coming down off the cliffs like liquid silver. The air was intense and dry, pungent with sage. She could actually smell the rivers, too — the familiar Nicola with its edge of snow from its high watershed past Barton Lake, the Thompson with its flinty nose of benchlands and rattlesnakes. Margaret had been hoping to see a rattlesnake, but it was still too early for them to come out of their dens on the talus slope, though she found the sun very warm — it was early March — and watched the grass expectantly anyway.
Once Nicholas did come, but Margaret had gone with one of the Nicola ladies to Kamloops by stage for a few days. When she returned home, she was bitterly disappointed to find out she had missed his visit. It had been brief, and he’d had to return to Spences Bridge to meet with Dr. Charles Newcombe, who was travelling up from Victoria to purchase some baskets and clothing that Mr. Teit had accumulated. He left a letter for her with Jenny and promised to come again soon. Margaret went for a ride that evening, letting Daisy gallop until she was quite damp with sweat and then cooling her down by a creek that made its way down the hill to meet with the Nicola River. Margaret sat in the dry grass and let Daisy graze, holding the reins in her right hand while she wiped at tears with her left. She had never felt so lonely in her life, although the only thing that had changed was her meeting with Nicholas, and he was gone, so oughtn’t she to feel as she had before he came? It was hard to fathom how a person could feel so bereft and lonesome, just because another was absent. It was not only that he was far away but that there was no possibility of an evening visit, even though there hadn’t been many: the sight of dust rising on the Douglas Lake road and then the sound of his horse on the lane. Or the knowledge that he was sleeping just a few miles away, under the same sky, the same moon in its house over him. She wondered if her mother and father felt this way when her father was away in the cowcamps or the branding camps for weeks at a time. Her mother always seemed busy and never cried. Yet she was quiet in the evenings and given to looking out windows at the black night. She often prepared his favourite foods and told the children as they were eating, “Your father loves these biscuits, I hope he’s eating well.”
While Margaret sat in the grass, she remembered how she had once felt the presence of the young girl here among the rocks and dry earth, and she wondered if the girl had longed for a particular young man, made excuses to be around him, watched him under shy lashes at communal events. Margaret hoped she hadn’t died without feeling the sharp catch of her breath in her throat when the boy caught her eye or brushed against her. She took solace in the fact that she was alive to feel these things, not buried with a necklace of elk teeth and a drinking tube she would never use. She’d kept the drinking tube after cleaning it carefully, she’d even used it to drink from the Nicola River; how odd it had felt to taste the living water coming up through the ancient length of bone, flakes of calcium coming away against her palate. She kept it on the windowsill in her bedroom, a charm to be held and wondered at on nights when, sleepless, she stood looking at the stars. Had the girl’s mouth ever touched the surface, had her tongue probed the opening, wearing the rough edges smooth over time?
The whole family helped with haying, moving up to the hay camp for its duration, while Jenny’s sister Josie stayed at the ranch house to feed the chickens and pigs, milk the cow, and keep an eye on Thistle and the Bonny Prince. The hay camp was fun for the younger children, they were allowed to sleep in tents and ride with William on the mower or bull rake, depending on what he was doing. The hay, once cut, dried and raked, was stacked with the help of swinging boom stackers, moved from stack to stack as needed. Once a stack was finished, those on top who had helped to place and level the hay coming up would ride to the ground again on a sling. When William was working on the stackers, he’d allow the children up to the top of the stack to help, and then they’d ride down on the sling, shrieking with excitement as the sling dangled and swung. At night, the men would wash in the creek and sleep early, after a game or two of poker or horseshoes on the shorn field, because the mornings began at four thirty; they could be heard talking quietly in their tents or else snoring. The Chinese cook smoked in the evenings outside his cabin, the fumes of opium and the joss he burned inside hanging over the clean scent of hay like an exotic curtain. Margaret rose early to help catch and harness the horses. She loved the sight of them in the dawn field, standing in groups near a cottonwood, and their movement toward her as she rattled oats in a bucket to catch their attention, looming out of the mist, huge and sombre. She had her favourites among the working teams — a pair of Clydesdales named Bill and Florrie, who had massive feet and densely feathered fetlocks. She liked to fit their harnesses on while they held their big heads low for her, and they always stood stock still while she fastened the straps under their bellies and tails. In the mornings their cool faces smelled of grass, an occasional seed caught in the fine hairs on their lips. The way they wrinkled their lips around their teeth reminded her of the toothless old men she saw in church, working their gums while the minister preached of God and angels.
Hay camp was a pleasant diversion from Margaret’s preoccupation with Nicholas. Up on the hay meadows, she stopped half-expecting to see him riding up to the house, she wasn’t reminded of his mouth as he kissed her under the trees on the road to Douglas Lake, and she had no privacy in the tent she shared with her sisters to fill with the memory of dancing with him in the Nicola Hall, the pressure of his hand on the small of her back. When she did remember, it was the weight of his body against hers during a waltz, his face against her hair. It was kissing him while around them lightning crackled and snapped, the taste of his mouth. She remembered the shock and excitement in his eyes as the two of them steadied Thistle while the stallion grunted and thrust into her, his teeth bared as he released his seed into her damp mysterious body. And Margaret remembered washing herself by lamplight that evening, and how she had felt she was drowning in pleasure.
The days at the hay camp were sunny and warm, an occasional afternoon storm coming in from the northeast to cloud the skies, produce thunderheads and summer lightning, then pass as quickly as it arrived. When the hay was all stacked and the family had packed up their belongings, the wagon returned them to the home ranch, where the garden was flourishing and the redtailed hawk chicks in the big cottonwood were beginning to fly, their parents teaching them tricks of aviation and pursuit. The songbirds were fledging, too, just in time for the parent hawks to teach their young to hunt inexperienced larks, as well as ground squirrels and the marmots whistling on the rough shoulders of the erratics.
There was a letter from Nicholas to say he was coming to Spahomin for four days in early August. Before he arrived, Margaret rode to her grandmother’s cabin to help her gather rose hips for drying. She tried to time her visits with a plant trip so that she could learn how and where to gather the roots, stems, and berries that her grandmother used for food and medicine. It was one thing to sit in the kitchen and hear Grandmother Jackson describe how to dig up a tuber or remove a certain portion of a tree’s bark and another to walk the dry hills or creek banks with the gathering baskets and watch exactly how much bark to take or whether the berries were at the right point of ripeness. The rose hips were perfect, plump and full. They filled one basket, and then Grandmother carefully cut some stems of the rose bushes to take back to use for basket handles. They found some tall mint growing on the banks of a creek and cut many stems of it to dry for keeping bugs away from the beds.
“I’ll put some of this inside the pillows,” said Grandmother Jackson. “The feathers get musty, and the mint will make them fresh.”
“Nicholas has written me to say he’s coming in a few days. Do you mind him staying with you?” Margaret wanted to hear her grandmother’s opinion of the man whose name filled her with such pleasure.
“He is a nice young man, and I enjoy his company. So many of our young men are anxious to be accepted by the white people, and they haven’t the time to listen to the old stories. Some don’t even want the language any longer. In my heart, this is part of my fear, the old fear that we will disappear. If we don’t speak our language, tell our stories, feed and heal our bodies with what the Creator has put on our doorsteps, then who will we be? Who? It is very good to have someone come who thinks the stories are important. Your mother says he came to look for you the last time he was in the valley and was disappointed not to find you. This time he will be luckier, I think.”
They laid out the rose hips in single layers in shallow baskets when they returned to the cabin, and peeled the stems of rose wood and laid them out along the rafters to dry. Then the two women prepared a meal of bacon and bannock and took it out onto the porch to eat with mugs of strong tea. Margaret had promised to milk her family’s cow that evening, so she left and rode towards home on a trail that the Reserve cattle used, leading along the river where it left the road. She was about halfway home when Daisy snorted and balked, reluctant to go further. And Margaret could see why: just ahead, standing ankle deep in the river, was a big black bear, her two cubs just behind her. Although Daisy had squealed before Margaret could pat her neck and direct her, the bear was busy at the river’s edge and hadn’t yet got wind of them.
Keeping a tight rein, Margaret backed Daisy along the trail to where a cluster of young willows sheltered the water. She could see that the bear had a fish, a salmon, and was tearing open its belly; the eggs shone in the body cavity and the cubs were being encouraged to take a mouthful. The sharp stink of bear stung Margaret’s nostrils and Daisy’s, as well. She was beginning to fret on the short rein, skittering and blowing. The sow turned and saw them there among the willows and dropped the fish. Clacking her teeth, she started toward them, then retreated, growling and snapping. The river was too fast for Margaret to attempt to cross it with Daisy in such an agitated state, and the rise on the other side of the trail was too steep to take at a run. She did not want to turn and retreat and risk having the bear catch up with them. Although bears looked clumsy and slow, Margaret knew how fast they could run, especially when provoked.
The sow bear turned to her cubs and grunted a command. Before Margaret could think, the little family was swiftly climbing the steep grassy slope across the trail and vanishing over the hill. Margaret was so relieved to see them go that she collapsed over Daisy’s neck, exhaling the breath she had not been aware she was holding.
Returning to the ranch was anticlimactic. Frightened as she had been, recognizing the danger of the situation, Margaret was thrilled to see the bear and her young at the river, eating the rosy salmon flesh and then disappearing into the landscape so quickly. There was such beauty in their glossy coats, their long claws, the glistening eggs in the belly of the fish. Her father was up with the cattle, and she told her mother instead, expecting it would worry her but needing to share the story.
Instead, Jenny told her, “The black bear was my father’s guardian spirit, you know. I always liked bears and was never afraid of them when we picked berries or put our weirs across the river. My father said they could hear what you said about them. You should never say hurtful things because then they wouldn’t come when you needed them. And we did need them sometimes, for their fat and their meat, and for winter robes.”
Margaret was surprised to hear her mother talk of such things. Because she had not undertaken a puberty ceremony and because she seldom spoke of her childhood, her daughter supposed that she wasn’t interested in the old ways. She asked her mother about her grandmother’s guardian spirit.
“It’s the mountain goat,” Jenny said. “We don’t see them here, but she was from Shulus, you know, and there were some over there. It suits her, she was always scrambling about on the mountainsides looking for plants. But if I’d had a guardian, I’d have wanted it to be the bear because it was special to my father. Now, do you want your supper before you milk the cow or after?”
Margaret took her time with the milking as she thought about her mother. Because she didn’t talk much about her life before William, it was easy to forget she’d had one. She was the daughter who had been lost to the priests; that was the way Grandmother Jackson seemed to think of her. Yet they were not estranged, nothing so dramatic. Jenny still visited her mother at Spahomin from time to time, though she was closer to her brother and sister; and she always sent little gifts to her mother when Margaret went over alone. But from what she’d just said, she had felt a bond with her father. He’d been dead for years, having been taken by consumption when Margaret was a tiny child. She had one memory of him: sitting in the cabin Grandmother lived in, hearing him tell a story about Old-one creating the Nicola Valley and making the mountains and the original people. At home she had been hearing about God and the garden of Eden from her mother and father; she thought Eden must look like Culloden, all golden grass, ringed with ponderosas, and God like her grandfather, whom she thought of as the Old-one. She had not doubted that he could do anything he put his mind to, his voice was that deep and strong as he told the story, and she didn’t notice how thin he was, how wasted his arms, and how he kept coughing into a bloody handkerchief.
Margaret dreamed of the bears that night, the surprise of the mother as she heard Daisy’s snorting and caught the scent of them in the air, and she heard again the snapping of her teeth. In the dream she dismounted and went down to the river to greet them, then ran with them up the steep hill, her loose black coat hanging from her bones. In her mouth, the taste of fish eggs and raw flesh, and the husks of rose hips flecking the dung she left in the excitement of their departure. How will I tell my parents I’ve left them, she wondered, will I still have speech? But when she tried to talk, only muffled grunts came from her mouth, her tongue a thick obstacle, immovable. When she woke, she found three black hairs on her pillow, too coarse to have come from her own head.
Nicholas came with a little gift, a photograph he’d taken of Margaret’s favourite from among her grandmother’s baskets — the split cedar with the pattern of deer hoof and entrails. It was sitting on the sinew chair on the porch, weathered railings to one side.
“I didn’t know you had a camera!” she said. “Did you take many photographs?”
“I’m still learning how to use it,” he confessed, “and quite a lot of them didn’t turn out. I tried taking the glass plates away to develop, and some of them fogged or the emulsion cracked. I want to make a record of things, though, and your grandmother’s baskets are exquisite. I thought that from the beginning, but I can verify it now that I’ve spent time looking at others and consulting with Dr. Newcombe. He has given me instructions to photograph everything. Perhaps you could help me with the equipment if you’re interested.”
When Margaret had been younger, a Dr. Sutton had practised medicine in Nicola. He’d come to the ranch to attend to a cowhand who’d broken an arm, and he was often seen at the socials. He was a big man and hard of hearing, the result of a childhood bout of scarlet fever. But he claimed the bracing air of the valley was bringing his hearing back. His interests had included photography, and he was the one whom William had traded the quarter side of beef for a family portrait to send to Astoria. Dr. Sutton had photographed his servant as well as other people in the valley; it was a point of pride to have been taken by the doctor.
“Your grandmother is letting me use the old smokehouse as a darkroom. That’ll be perfect for the images of her baskets and everything nearby. I’ve got a tent, too, to take up for shots of more remote areas like that old campsite your father showed me. And I’d like to take some shots of the kikuli houses down by the lake, maybe with some other things to make them look as though they’re still in use. I know people haven’t lived in them for twenty years or so, but they’re still part of active memory, your grandmother’s memory.”
Margaret examined the equipment Nicholas pulled out of his bags. Glass plates wrapped in canvas, jars of solutions, pans, a bundle that proved to be the windowless tent to use as a portable darkroom. Nicholas explained that he didn’t really need the darkroom now that he’d been given plates coated with gelatin emulsion — before coming to the valley, he’d used collodion plates, which needed to be developed immediately — but he wanted to develop the plates anyway to make sure he’d got the images he wanted.
“How stupid I’d feel if I took them back to Spences Bridge or shipped them to Victoria and then discovered I had nothing at all to show for my work. So I’ll develop them here and make contact prints. I’ll teach you everything I know if you like, but I’m really still learning, too.”
I’ve seen the photographs taken in the early years of the century and have looked deeply into their images to find a clue about the lives there. They hover and circle, sometimes surfacing in sleep with a clarity never experienced in dreams, as if they are memories of my own. The mule-drawn wagons on the Cariboo road. The astonishing prospect of Hell’s Gate on the Fraser River, racks of salmon drying on the rocks beside the chasm. Views of the stopping houses with plumes of smoke rising from their chimneys, women in long dresses drying their hands on aprons as they greeted the travellers. The crowded courtroom in Kamloops, Bill Miner with a bemused look on his face as he rested his chin in his hand in the prisoners box. In the early pictures of men at work, the loggers pose on their springboards, one at each end of a gut fiddle, ready to topple the immense trees of our beginnings. Doukhobor women draw the ploughs over plains of unbroken grass in pairs, straining to the task. And there are the photographs of the valley itself, a kikuli house, c.1898, with the ladder showing at the opening but otherwise abandoned, Dr. Sutton’s picture of a woman net-fishing the Nicola River in 1900, the Roi.pellst family in 1914, posed in front of a tule shelter, their buckskin clothing so finely worked and regal, so palpable that I want to straighten the fringe with my fingers. I know that they wouldn’t have worn those clothes regularly in 1914 because I’ve seen the other photographs, too — Frederick Dally’s shot of people praying at Lytton, Dr. Sutton’s photo of a mealtime in 1898, tents of canvas, most people with their backs to the camera, one fellow standing with his hands behind his back, his suspenders holding up his worsted trousers. I want to enter the photograph, walk into the camp from the aspens to the left, be given a tin plate of bannock and a piece of fish. The grass is dry and heavy with seeds. I could take these seeds forward with me, hidden in my clothing, my hair, an amulet to summon the past into my life, extant, viable as lupin seeds removed from the stomach of a mastodon, to germinate and flourish in the soil of the present.
Nicholas had persuaded members of the Jackson family to allow him to photograph them in traditional clothing in front of a tule house that he and August’s boys had reconstructed. Grandmother Jackson had tule mats stored in her cabin and drew sketches for them to show the way the poles were placed, the mats layered and fastened. Inside the house was airy and smelled of dry grass. Nicholas was so fond of its interior that he decided to sleep in it for the remainder of his visit. He’d lie in the silver latticed screen the moonlight made on the ground as it filtered through the spots in the mats where the stalks of dried bulrush held together with Indian hemp had separated slightly. He’d look up towards the smoke-hole and imagine summer villages of these shelters, the smell of curing fish and bear fat in the air, baskets of drying berries, and fish nets spread out for mending on the bushes. He wanted to dream his way back into that life, become a part of it, however temporarily, and carry away the smoke in his clothing, the foxtail barley seeds in his hair. He couldn’t explain why he found it so fascinating, even haunting, why he wanted to enter it in the enigmatic realm of dream, knowing any other way was impossible. But when he slept and dreamed, it was of his father in the Ausable River, casting a line with a mayfly fashioned of coloured thread and feather on its end, bracing himself against the strong current, his old creel over his shoulder. Or else he dreamed of his grandmother in Chantilly, brushing crumbs from her dining table with a little silver brush and pan, singing as she worked a fragment of Purcell’s Dido.
Margaret helped with the shoot of the family standing by the tule lodge. They were wearing clothing of light buckskin and sage bark, elaborately ornamented with quillwork, painted designs, beadwork and dentalia. Some of the old clothing, saved and wrapped in the burlap bags that potatoes were stored in, was still used for ceremonial purposes, but other pieces had been begged, borrowed and stolen for museum collections, some even purchased, a fair price arrived at and agreed upon. August and Alice stood side by side, looking solemn, and three of their children gathered around them. August wore his father’s headband of coyote tails and carried his hammerstone carved with the head and claws of a bear. The smallest child, Tessie, wore a headband decorated with buttons. Margaret thought they looked wonderful, so stately and serious, transformed almost into the shadowy figures of the ancestors who were spoken of so often and who had worn these clothes as naturally as their own skins. She had the sense again of being in two worlds at once, wanting one so intensely that she felt her heart might break but knowing, too, that it was not her complete home, the one which involved meals at the long table in her father’s house, sewing by lamplight as Aunt Elizabeth and Grandmother Stuart had shown her, cross-stitching and delicate French knots articulating a verse on fine linen with borders of bluebells and purple English violets while her father played sweet airs on his violin. She travelled out from this home to hear the glorious voice of Canada’s Queen of Song, knew every inch of the fields and creeks of the ranch, played chess on the long winter evenings with her father under the low window looking out to stars and the occasional owl alighting in the bare cottonwoods. But a part of her, too, walked on the dry grass of Spahomin, knew where to find lilies, where to find wild potatoes to bring back to her grandmother’s cabin. Walking that land, with her favourite basket over her shoulder, she could hear the voices of the dead rattling like dry seedpods in the wind. Grandmother Jackson said that sometimes the dead longed for the living so deeply that they followed them through their days, touching a beloved’s shoulder as lightly as a moth might so that the person would turn to see who was so close. At night they might stand by the bed of a dreamer and breathe memories into an open sleeping mouth. Or you could feel a hand fit itself into your own, dry as dust and light, oh, very light, never a burden if the dead ones chose to sit behind you on the horse or to share your bed.
After he had the composition he wanted, Nicholas asked the Jackson family to remain where they stood so that he could show Margaret how to use the camera. She stepped up to the tripod and put her eye to the viewfinder while Nicholas arranged the hood of dark cloth over her head. She could smell the varnished wood casing of the camera and the acrid chemical as Nicholas slid a plate into place.
“You should see them here as you would like the photograph to look. Think of balance and frame. The light is good, and we’ve got the magnesium to improve it. When you’re ready, we’ll take the shot.”
Margaret looked through the arrangement of glass and mirrors, expecting to see her family members in their unfamiliar clothing against the shelter of dried tule-grass. That was what she looked for. But instead she felt light-headed, goosebumps on her arms and shoulders made her shiver, and she could feel the little hairs on the back of her neck rise, one by one. What she could see through the viewfinder was a group of people moving through the grass, one of them putting an armload of sticks by the fire, a few children, so airy she could almost see through them, and some thin horses in the distance. Although the day was still, she could hear something, a wind, voices, almost whispers. She reached one hand toward them but it was as though she didn’t exist: the figures spoke quietly to one another, thrust sticks into the fire, turned a mat that was lying over a wild rose bush. One of the children coughed, one of the adult figures looked worried at the harsh phlegmy sound. Another child played in the grass with a few small stones, humming. The sound was like bees in flowers. When Nicholas asked quietly if she was ready, Margaret nodded under the cloth and the ribbon of magnesium snapped and burned. What she had seen was gone, and it was Aunt Alice and Uncle August smiling at her, a little self-conscious in their buckskin.
Nicholas inserted another plate and replaced the hood over Margaret’s head. She closed her eyes hard before opening them again to look through the viewfinder. With a hand, she gestured to Tessie to turn her face to profile, she gestured to August to straighten the hammerstone. They moved together a little as she indicated and then held the pose until she had taken the shot she wanted.
She blinked in the sunlight and shuddered. Nicholas took the glass plates to the smokehouse to begin the process of developing, and she followed him, told him what she’d seen, hesitating at what she might call the diaphanous figures she’d seen through the viewfinder.
“It wasn’t them at all, it was something else entirely. Yet someone still of this place. Like a dream, as though I was dreaming. I could almost see through the shapes of the children. Do you remember I told you about seeing the men being taken to Kamloops in the rain for the train robbery trial? It was that kind of seeing.”
Nicholas looked at her, puzzled. “I don’t know what to say. Perhaps the lens or plates are fogging, but wouldn’t I have noticed that? When I looked through the viewfinder, I saw them perfectly clearly, August and Alice, I mean. But we’ll develop these and see what turns up. Do you feel ill or feverish? It’s very hot today, and maybe you’ve had too much sun.”
“No, nothing like that. You forget I’m used to this heat, I’ve never known any other kind of summer. But I hope I haven’t ruined the shot. Maybe I’ll feel better in a shady place.” But saying that, she knew it wasn’t the sun that had caused her to hear the humming of that child, to see the sticks thrust into the fire.
When the plates were developed, Nicholas began to see how good the photographs would be. When he had time, he’d make contact prints from the plates. August’s family looked magnificent in the dry air, and the light had been perfect, helped only a little by magnesium. Nicholas could see on the negative plate that each element was recorded with a clarity he hadn’t yet achieved with his photographs.
By the next evening, Nicholas had a group of photographs drying on a wire he’d strung from the ceiling of the temporary darkroom. The pungency of his chemicals was almost overwhelming, and he caught whiffs of smoked fish from the oils that had penetrated the wooden walls over the years. The shots that Margaret took were the best. He couldn’t say why, but the people in front of the tule lodge were so alive and potent in the clothing of their forefathers and mothers. They shimmered in the clear summer air, strangely lit as though by fire. Margaret, who had been working alongside him, was quiet as she watched the images come forward on the paper, watched as he toned with gold chloride, washed, fixed, and puzzled over each photograph.
Nicholas turned to Margaret. “You see how different your shots are from mine? I swear we looked at the same scene, but you’ve made something of it that I wasn’t able to. Do you see what I mean? Yours are, well, they’re alive somehow. You’ve made a connection, like eye contact or something, I don’t know what to call it.”
The girl nodded. “Yes, I can see the difference. I had a feeling they’d be good when we made the exposure. I can’t tell you how, I just did. But it isn’t quite what I saw, you know, or at least the first shot isn’t. You thought the plates might be fogging, but it’s clear they weren’t. When I looked through the viewfinder that first time, I saw people moving, doing things with a fire. I heard a child cough, heard another child humming as he played on the ground. It was my uncle’s family and yet it wasn’t, quite. I’ve had this feeling before about other things — once when I was gathering plants with my grandmother, for instance, and then the train robbers. It’s a little frightening, but I would like to try some more, if you’re willing.”
Margaret and Nicholas rode home to the ranch side by side that evening, holding hands and talking of an expedition to the kikuli site by the lake in the next few days. It was so clear that they could see the mountains beyond Nicola Lake turning crimson as the sun went down. A sparrow hawk was hunting for grasshoppers and field mice over the pasture before the ranch, and they stopped to watch it hover and plunge, sounding its shrill killy-killy cry in the falling light. Ahead they could see the ranch in its grove of cottonwoods, two horses in the corral watching their progress, and then, one by one, the windows glowed as the lamps were lit by someone within. A ranch dog had spotted them coming and was barking on the edge of the road leading to the house.
“Will you come in for a meal?” Margaret asked.
“No, I’d better head back now while there’s still some light.” Pulling on her hand, Nicholas drew Margaret toward him until he could touch her face and kiss her. Her mouth was dusty and her hair smelled of the darkroom. They kissed until the dog trotted up to see what was taking the horses so long to arrive.
“Here’s my escort to see me home,” laughed Margaret, and then leaned to kiss Nicholas once more, releasing her reins in her attempt to get as close to him as she could. She wanted his smell on her hands and shoulders, the warmth of his breath on her neck. Her horse, impatient, started toward the barn, and she hastily reached down its neck for the reins, calling goodbye as she left.
Lying in her bed that night, Margaret recalled how she had felt after the Albani concert in May. She remembered sitting in the carriage with her face against the cool glass of the windows, wondering about her future. She had been amazed by Madame Albani, her singing and her gracious manner at the Slavin house. But she had been particularly taken by the younger singer, Eva Gautier, that evening, impressed that someone so young could have been so sure of herself to have made a career of singing. That evening, Margaret had tried to assess her own accomplishments, and they had been such modest ones — training horses, tracking coyotes across the grass, helping her grandmother dig up roots of blue camas. But now she felt she had discovered the thing she could direct her abilities toward: making photographs and recording the life of her valley. She had experienced the camera, its wood, the texture of the brass fittings and the gauges, the rack and pinion arrangement that adjusted the focus. Although she had been unnerved by the sight of the moving figures through the viewfinder, she had also known in a way beyond words that her images would be good ones. The process of developing and printing she was confident she could learn. All spring she’d had the feeling she was on a threshold. A darkened doorway led to her future, and she had not yet had the courage to even consider peering into its shadows. But now she knew she was ready to take the step across, to what and where, she was still uncertain, but she was filled with the sense of possibility. She had the map and now needed to learn to read its legend. And she had hope, hope that her family would permit her to do what she needed to do to learn more about photography, and hope that whatever she did, Nicholas would somehow be a part of it.
A receipt for a camera, purchased September, 1906, from Mary Spencer in Kamloops, accompanied by a letter.
Dear Miss Stuart,
Your father asked me to recommend a camera for you. There are as many cameras as there are photographers, but from his descriptions of your interests, I am hopeful that you will enjoy this fine Sanderson field camera as much as I did. I bought it new, on a trip to London, in 1895. I must say I fell in love with its appearance as much as anything. The mahogany is such a pretty wood and the brass fittings lovely, I think. The lens is a Beck Symmetrical, iris to f64. If you ever have questions about it, please do write to me. The reason I am willing to sell it is that it simply hasn’t been used for its true purpose, which is field work, vast landscapes, skies. Increasingly my work has been portraiture, weddings and civic events, and I seldom work outdoors as I once did.
You will notice that the plate on the camera says “G. Houghton, Son.” This is the manufacturer. I was so impatient to take possession of this camera that I went directly to Mr. Houghton in High Holborn in order to see the final stages of the camera’s construction rather than wait for it at the dealer.
I had the outfit case modified by a local harness maker so that I could carry it on my back; that is what the straps are for. I had them made to be adjustable, and therefore the case is comfortable to wear over summer clothing or heavier winter wear.
This camera should be used, it should do what it does best, and I know you will employ it. I am gratified to hear of a young woman taking up this excellent calling. Please let me know how you progress, and best of luck to you.
I remain,
Sincerely yours,
Mary Spencer
The receipt acknowledges gratefully the sum of thirteen dollars and notes the inclusion of some eight-by-ten plates with the camera and its case.
Of course I wish the camera were available to look at, and I wonder where it might be found, if anywhere. If the hands of women are present in the textiles they have worked, the smoothing of their fingers imprinted in the furrows of quilted cotton and the tiny mice-feet of feather-stitching, in the sayings they have chosen to replicate on linen, then what remains of a woman in the camera she has used to frame her world? The apparitions of all the images she has sought and made visible on paper, would they linger in the workings of the camera, its polished mahogany body? I think of it as a repository for her soul, or part of her soul, everything her eager heart made a connection with by focusing and developing.