A Man in a Distant Field (18 page)

A Columbia lily, she'd told him, a plant with bulbous roots which the Indians had eaten, along with another plant often growing nearby, a nodding brown-stippled flower called a chocolate lily, or rice-root, for the numerous bulbils producing the flowers. The Indians would dry them, steam them in pits like potatoes, and eat them with fish grease. She'd said her children always thought the flowers smelled of Christmas oranges, and putting his nose to the flower, he had thought it must be so, remembering the rare occasion such a fruit had come to Delphi. He'd asked Mrs. Neil about the bay at Moore Point and she'd said it was a campsite used annually by the Indians, although she supposed that would change with the number of settlers moving to that part of the coast.

She was a woman who would be remembered in the stories of this area, he thought. Kind, resourceful, a mother of children who had never known another place and who had eaten food grown from its soil. She had lost one child shortly after its birth and had buried it beyond her house in a little enclosure of pickets, wild roses growing around the grave. That was a thing to anchor a woman to a place, he supposed. A woman would want to nurture a child, even after its death, remember its birthday, croon a lullaby to the seeding grasses. He'd read of tribes who buried dead children around their cooking fires so they wouldn't get cold. A woman would understand that, he thought, even if she might not do it herself.

One morning when he woke, he was startled to hear voices right outside the cabin. He peered out the window and saw Alex, Charles, and Albert sitting on the stones with a newly painted canoe drawn up onto the beach. He quickly pulled on a shirt and went out to greet them.

The canoe was beautiful. They had fashioned thwarts of clean, new cedar boards, and painted the prow with a stylized serpent, its tail curving elegantly down towards the keel. Declan marvelled again that this vessel had been contained within one of the big trees growing near the work site and that these men had purposefully and expertly brought it to life.

Charles came forward with a paddle. “We made you this, for your help, and for you to use when you come out with us.” He handed the paddle to Declan.

It was cedar, nicely shaped and finished, and it had the same raven painted on its surface as the burial canoe had on its prow.

“They are clever fellows, the ravens, and we noticed you liked it when we spoke to them.”

Declan didn't know what to say. He thanked them with a catch in his throat. He could smell the canoe, the spiciness of cedar and salt and smoke. They invited him to go with them for the day, out to one of the village sites. He couldn't think of any reason not to go when his heart longed to be in the big canoe, his arms pulling in unison with theirs.

There was a brisk wind and some scattered rain clouds, although the sun came out between them with a welcome warmth. Declan sat on the middle thwart, finding the right position for his paddle. Out to open water, then north, past the canoe's work site, past the mouth of Sakinaw Creek and its ancient middens, past the logging camp on Nelson Island with its congregation of ravens watching (
for sorrow, for joy, how many for belonging?
), and then they were gliding into the shallow waters surrounding a small, grassy island.

“My mother has asked for some kinnikinick,” said Alex, “and this has always been a good place for it.”

Declan wondered what kinnikinick was.

“Look all around you,” was Alex's reply.

The island was covered in a low-growing plant, like heather, with flowers like small pink urns. It resembled a plant that grew in Ireland, he thought, a plant that produced berries and brilliant red leaves in the fall.

“Shhh ...” whispered Charles, and listening, they could hear the low hum of bees foraging in the little flowers.

Moving carefully among the bees, the Indian men cut lengths of leafy stems, trying to leave the flowers for the bees, and so that they could turn to berries, once pollinated. When Declan asked what Lucy wanted the plant for, the men laughed. “Tobacco, eh,” said Alex. “She thinks the store stuff is too expensive so she mixes it with this. She says it was good for her mother
and it will be just as good for her. Later she'll pick the berries and dry them for winter.”

Leaving the island, Declan could see that they were entering an inlet with a tall mountain to one side and rocky headlands on the other. But tucked in a bay on their starboard side was a tiny village. A dock, some cabins clustered close to the shore, smoke blooming from the chimneys. “Whites call it Egmont, but our name is Sq'elawt'x. Means ‘sword fern,'” said Alex. “We're going over to the reserve on the other side of the inlet. Name of that place is Cetx'anax, or ‘bear's bum. 'We want to show my old uncle the canoe.”

Some small children were gathered on the beach as the canoe glided to the shore. It was quiet in the village. A couple of dogs play-fought on the boardwalk, and it sounded like someone was splitting firewood, a crisp chop, then a rattle as the logs broke apart. Alex had said only a few families continued to live there, most of them caring for elderly relatives who wouldn't move. A very old man sat in front of one of the log cabins. As he got up and slowly walked towards them, Declan could see that his back was bent and his head twisted to one side. But as he got closer, Declan noticed how bright and alive his eyes were. They took in the canoe first, a smile forming on his mouth, then glanced at Declan. He nodded a time or two and quietly said some words in another language.

“My uncle speaks no English,” explained Alex, “but he is telling you that you're welcome here. He thinks the canoe is very fine and wonders if you helped with it. He sees you have a paddle of your own.”

“Thank him for welcoming me but tell him that the canoe is all your own work.”

The men conducted a conversation in their own tongue, softly, looking towards Declan occasionally and gesturing towards the canoe. The uncle, helped by two children, crossed the pebbly
beach to examine the craft. He asked a few questions which Declan thought must have had to do with the steaming because he held his hands across the widest part of the canoe, murmuring and nodding at the responses from his nephew and great-nephews. After a few minutes, the uncle turned and led the men to his cabin where an ancient woman came out with mugs of tea. She smiled profusely and indicated dry stumps where they should seat themselves.

There had been rain clouds with watery sun, but now the sun shone full. There was a smell of fish, not unpleasant, but as though drying or smoking. Gazing around the village, Declan decided that the small sheds with smoke filtering out between the siding boards must be smokehouses. Further down the shore, a woman was raking for clams, putting them into an open-work basket beside her on the stones. There were no gardens, but bushes growing around the cabins were laden with blossoms that would soon become berries, given the fervent activity of hummingbirds in sunshine. He heard ravens chuckling unseen in the stands of big trees, their throaty voices adding to the mild din of dogs wrestling and a few children throwing pebbles to the water. The low voices and the rhythmic chopping conspired to make him sleepy. Putting his emptied mug on the ground beside his stump, he leaned back against the warm logs of the cabin and closed his eyes.

He was walking the boreen from Delphi, down through Tawnyinlough and Lettereeragh where the track accompanied the Bundorragha River to its marriage with Killary Harbour. Birdsong was sweet in the hedges, and off to the west, the Mweel Rea Mountains still had a crown of snow on their peaks. Shadows made the mountainsides a velvet of purple and dun. Willows along the riverside rippled silver in the breeze and trout rose to the surface of the water for the long-legged flies. A magpie was squawking in a hazel,
one for sorrow, two for joy
. He
thought he could hear the second one but woke with a start, realizing it was a raven.

The men were indicating it was time to leave. Alex carried a basket of smoked fish down to the canoe and placed it carefully under his thwart. They eased the canoe through the shallows and stroked out of the bay, lifting their paddles in farewell.

Declan thought they'd head back, but the men guided the canoe in the direction of a group of islands emerging out of spray. The current beneath the keel was strong and paddling was easier.

“Skookumchuck,” called Charles from the front thwart. “Tides meeting from Hunechin side and Jervis side. We won't go through. Just wanted to show you.”

It was quite a sight, the convergence of two powerful tides, the force of their meeting creating spreading whirlpools. Albert told Declan a canoe had been taken by one of the whirlpools, sucked under, and its passengers, two young men, never seen again, although the canoe eventually found its way to shore a mile or two down the inlet. Charles pointed out the rising heads of sea lions in the tumult of water, saying they fed there regularly, pursuing schools of eulachon or herring through the rapids. Two of the animals came close to the canoe so that Declan could see that their faces were dog-like, smooth. Their bodies were massive, joyous, as they plunged into the quick-moving water, their tails coming as something of a surprise after their faces. You expected legs, not flippers and a fishy tail. Declan said this to the men and they laughed.

“Our people hunted them with harpoons and cedar floats, each family with its own special type. The chiefs would wear their bristles in their headdresses. Not much of that anymore, though,” explained Alex.

They were quiet on their way back to Oyster Bay. The sun had been covered again by cloud and big, cold raindrops fell.
Alex reached into the basket and handed each man a piece of smoked fish. They slowed the canoe and took a moment to eat what seemed to Declan like the very essence of the place in which he had found himself—the fish tasted of woodsmoke and salt and itself, of course, the flank of a salmon caught in one of the Indian gillnets or weirs, and carefully prepared to provide nourishment and solace in the dark months. Passing the island where they'd gathered the kinnikinick, he could see the mountains of the mainland, wreathed in cloud and crowned, like Mweel Rea in his brief dream, with snow. He felt desperately homesick, of a sudden, but he didn't know which home he was missing: the cabin at World's End where his loyal dog waited or the burned husk in the shadows of the Sheefry Hills where no one kept a fire going or a bit of dinner warm for his return.

The poem was leading him on a merry dance. So many false starts for the homecoming, so many obstacles. There was abundant weather in the poem, elemental forces that affected the sea, and affected also the characters. He was not pursuing it from beginning to end but entering parts almost at random and hoping for the poetry to speak to him. Sometimes it took him by the coattails, as when he read of Elpenor's burial, shook him like a cloud of rain until all the tears inside him had been released and he was cleansed by the accompanying wind. Other parts, as when Odysseus encountered his mother in Hades' kingdom, were deep wells of sorrow that swallowed him up. His translations showed him the poem from the inside out, how words connected to other words made a framework, a structure, how each image provided a layer or element to the structure, how it echoed and rang as images reappeared, changed slightly by weather or circumstance.

Some days he would sit on the table and brood on what the poetry told him about living. It was as though life was a long series of obstacles in which a man's own nature was put in opposition to something he could not see—the fickle bickering of the gods and goddesses, the capricious whims of a witch.

In early July, he had begun to bathe in the sea. The days were often hot and his cabin was stuffy. During the cooler months, he had heated water from the creek on his stove and washed himself by lamplight; now he chose early morning to enter the sea, if the tide was right, and plunge himself down into its chilly depths. He could not swim. As a boy growing up near Fin Lough and Dhulough, he had heard of people who could swim, but his parents shared the fatalism of most of the country people in the area, particularly those who fished for a living: if the sea wanted you, it would have you, and there was no point in resisting. But as children would, he paddled his feet in the lough and loved the freedom of following the course of a creek down from the side of a mountain, bare-footed and stepping from stone to stone when the creek ran too deep or cold for comfort.

The sea was something again all right. Bone-chilling at first, but gradually the body appreciated its coolness, its brine and soft currents. The mud under his feet felt luxurious. Some days, when the tide was far out when he rose from his bed, he would wait until it had sidled in to shore; he would enter the water over the rocks, warmed by the sun, and sit in a shallow depression in a large boulder. Steam would rise where the cold water met the warm rock. Leaving the water, he felt like a new man, his pale limbs tingling and his eyes stinging a little from the salt. A month passed and his skin softened with its acquaintance with the sea.