A Man in a Distant Field (20 page)

“The priests brought it to our people, too, for special days. It would arrive on the steamship at the dock in Sechelt and whoever had gone to bring back the provisions would have a little group of children following. I ate it so fast once I got a headache but that didn't stop me from wanting more. Careful how fast you eat the soopolallie, though. You won't get a headache but maybe a bellyache.”

They talked quietly after rinsing out their dishes in the creek. The fire was low and warm and the sun was falling behind a big hump to the west, which the men told Declan was called Texada. A few mosquitoes whined but not many—bats kept swooping down out of the trees to make a meal of them. Argos was curled up near the fire and the men laughed as her feet began to move in her sleep.

“Dreaming she is chasing a cougar maybe,” said Albert, chuckling.

“Or running from one anyhow,” added Charles.

Declan told them of seeing the cougar coming out of the bush in pursuit of a deer and how Argos had chased it back into the woods. He remembered how lovely the deer had looked, swimming out to sea with the sun between its antlers, and wondered if it had drowned or found safe landing. It mattered, suddenly, in the soft air, that a wild thing had not come to harm. As darkness fell, the men found their bedrolls and wrapped themselves up for the night.

At first, Declan could not remember where he was. It was very dark and he was outside. In panic, he moved his hands around his body and found Argos alert at his side. There was snoring coming from quite nearby. Ah, yes, he was camping with the Indian men somewhere on the edge of the world. Why had he woken? And then he heard the sound, the sound that had Argos tensed and ready beside him. Wolves, it must be, and near, too, from the sound of them. What an unearthly noise, lonely and cold. He could see one of the men, Charles, he thought, sitting up, too. Declan called to him softly.

“Is it wolves?”

“Yes, but nothing to worry about. There are lots of them around here. Your dog probably comes from them, with a head like that. I like to hear them at night. It reminds me of being a boy, heading out to the summer village, and stopping for the night in places like this.”

Declan remembered the story of Queenie's dame coming down from a logging camp in Neil's small boat, one of a litter of wolf pups. It was as though Argos's relatives were calling for her and she was alert to it, listening to each voice. But she had forgotten their language, lost her deep bond with the wild night.

“It's all right, girl. Ye've another place now, not with them. Go back to sleep so.”

Argos moaned and whimpered, but once the howling had moved farther away, perhaps in pursuit of deer, she sighed heavily and went back to sleep.

Declan was wide awake now, and listening to the wolves made him feel lonesome. It was that kind of sound; it entered your ears and made its way to your heart, awakening the ache of your loss and your homelessness. How far away he was, held only by the frailest of threads to their memories. In his mind,
he heard the shivery strings of a harp, felt the strong arms of Eilis surround his shoulders, touching him there and there, smelled sweet turf burning hot in the grate. How far away, and how long it had been. Even now, called to them in this way, he had no way of knowing if anything might be found, or where. And he felt far from World's End, its temporary protection. These men he was with seemed so self-contained, carrying their boxes to cook in, their lengths of fishing cord, in a craft they had taken from standing tree to completion. Yet this was, or had been, their home—this entire length of coast with its seasonal villages, its campsites, the slopes of kinnikinick ready for gathering. It was all familiar and known, as a small plot of potato soil had been known to Declan. And, he supposed, as the western slope of Ben Creggan and Ben Gorm, the streams running down from the mountain loughs, the billowy clouds announcing rain, had all been known to the generations of his family in their shadows. How a stone from the Sheefry Hills might find its way into a sheep fence or a house wall, an anchor against rootlessness, and how a man idly thumbing a worn flint or stumbling upon an ancient cooking ring would know himself to be hinged to the place by such fittings. The hinge both a part of the structure and the door, as well as the means of its opening.

When he slept finally, he dreamed of Rose. Not as a young goddess rising from the waves, her body fair as any man might want, but as the girl he had taught to read, a girl who reminded him of his daughters, the pupils who arrived each morning at the Bundorragha school house in patched frocks, eager for books. He was ashamed to think that he had seen Rose naked, and yet in the dream she was utterly recovered to him in her innocence and youth.

In the morning, the men made the fire, brewed the strong tea they favoured, and ate the remainder of Declan's loaf. Then
Alex announced it was time to go fishing. He reached into one of the storage boxes in the canoe and brought out a coil of line. It was made of the inner bark of cedar, Declan was told, and it was very strong. It needed to be strong for halibut; they were big fish and put up a fight. Fishing line could also be made of kelp, knotted together, and nettles. Lucy made the cedar line after cutting and preparing the bark, and it was agreed that her fishing lines were best.

Out of the storage box came hooks, elegant devices made of bent yew wood with a barb of sharpened bone. Albert lashed strips of octopus, kept cool in a vessel made from the bulb-end of bull kelp, onto the hooks below the barb with fine twine, also made of cedar bark. The sinkers were round stones pierced through with holes, fastened to lengths of the cedar line.

Once the gear was prepared, the men pushed the canoe out into the surf and paddled strongly out to sea. The area where they stopped to drop the lines was a halibut bank, well known to the Indian people, Alex explained.

They didn't have to wait long. Albert's line pulled taut and he began to ease it in. “No hurry,” said Charles, “it's best to be patient.”

Declan was unprepared for the fish that fought its way to the surface. It was big, perhaps three feet in length, and flat. One side of it was brown with blotches of white, and one side was ghostly white. It thrashed and flailed, turning its body this way and that. Albert brought it to the side of the canoe and caught its tail with one hand. Charles held the line above the hook and Albert quickly killed the fish, using a polished wooden club to do so. He laid the fish on the bottom of the canoe and carefully removed the hook, cutting it from the fish's mouth where it had lodged itself. Declan was startled to see that the halibut's eyes were on the same side of its head, the brown side. It was eerie.

Alex noticed him examining the eyes and told him that the halibut was a very odd fish, beginning its life by swimming upright in shallower water but gradually sinking down into deep water and lying on its side with its eyes moving to its topside.

The men caught two more of the fish, bigger than the first one and each putting up a noble fight before being dispatched quickly with the polished club. Examining the hooks after they'd been removed from the halibut mouths, Declan was surprised to see pitting and teeth marks where the fish had attempted to free themselves by biting through the hooks.

It was late afternoon when they returned to the camp, the three fish covered in seaweed, and Argos waiting for them on the shore. Albert and Charles took the fish aside and cleaned them, disposing of the entrails by throwing them back to the sea, followed by two mewing gulls. They cut generous chunks of the meat, and once the fire had settled, they steamed it in one of the wooden boxes with hot stones and some sliced onions. When the fish was ready, a small jar was set by the box and the Indian men spooned some of its contents over their portion of fish. They told Declan it was grease, made from eulachon, and that he was welcome to try it but in their experience most white people found it too strong. It was indeed strongly flavoured and deeply salty, but Declan thought it very palatable. The halibut was mildly fishy and the grease was a good condiment. He told the Indian men of having to take fish oil, cod he thought it had been, at his school during the winter season, and how many of the boys hated it but he it found it rich and comforting. They nodded, having had a similar experience at the school in Sechelt, but for them the taste reminded them of grease, and for the children who were far from their homes, it was a poor reminder. Charles had made bannock, too, and the men used it to soak up every last drop of the cooking juices on
their plates. There was sweet tea to drink and Declan looked into his cup to see a calm face regarding him. It took him a moment to realize it was himself, on a western beach, his clothing alive with woodsmoke.

No wolves broke the silence of the night, and Declan slept, lulled by waves and a mild wind. Morning came with a fine drizzle of rain and the group broke up camp quickly, after a meal of tea and last night's bannock spread with eulachon grease. A brief look for a fish carved into a rock but nothing. Charles thought the creek was perhaps too small to sustain a run of salmon. The wind was behind them on the journey back.

As the canoe glided into Oyster Bay, Declan tried to find a way to thank the men for including him in their days. He looked at each one of them, their strong shoulders and weathered faces, and he wanted to embrace them. Instead, he began to say thank you and Alex touched his arm, held his elbow gently, and said, “It is good for us to know you and let you see something of how we used to live. You are a man who has lost something too.”

They raised the paddles as they left the bay.

Mist enveloped the shore when Declan woke the next morning. He could see no farther than the back of his hand, held at arm's length. Ravens muttered in the trees but he couldn't see whether there were two or seven (
for joy, for a journey
). He had dreamed he was home, and this time it was his farm at Delphi, it was Tullaglas, where animals waited to be fed but the house still smouldered. There was no sign of Eilis or the girls so he knew they were dead. In the dream, he fed the animals and began to gather stones to rebuild the house. A cairn of them grew, before long, as he brought offerings from old field walls and famine cabins, using his donkey and cart to carry them back. Potato plants were blooming in the lazy beds and mint was riotous in the damp corner of the garden.
My life is in this soil
, he said as he gathered stones, his
shoulders tight with the work of it,
my garden must be tended, my potatoes dug for the winter
. Declan woke with the clear image on the stones in his eyes, the smell of boggy soil in his nostrils. When he walked out into the fog, he might have been anywhere, Oyster Bay, Delphi, even the cove on Ithaka where Odysseus was left by the sailors of Skheria to make his own way home.

Declan had a mind to fish for lingcod. The Indian men told him it was a prized fish, with firm white flesh or, in the case of young lingcod, vivid green, a colour that would disappear upon cooking. They gave him a special hook to jig with, carved of yew, with a lure of abalone shell tied above the shank. He loaded his gear into his skiff, along with a small loaf and a chunk of cheese; he expected to be gone for the day and knew he would be hungry. For this trip, he left Argos behind.

Out past the settlement, past the rocky headlands with their peeling arbutus, to the kelp beds where he'd been told it was not uncommon to catch a fish of forty pounds or more. He baited his hook with a piece of herring and lowered his line, easing it down with a long pole. Then, keeping his boat steady with his oars, he waited.

Within ten minutes, Declan was hauling in something that looked more like a serpent than a fish, its body thrashing to break away from the hook. It was dark blue, with tracings of orange, and its mouth showed large teeth. Its fight shocked him, and he realized he was not expecting anything like it. He wrestled with it, losing line at one point but then recovering it, wrapping it around his hands and pulling until they bled. He decided he was willing to lose both the fish and his hook when suddenly the fish gave in, and he saw that its stomach had emerged through its mouth as it decompressed, following the herring up from the kelp bottom. It was still alive but had no fight left in it. Its eyes met his, the fish's shadowed with a fleshy plume. Declan apologized to it for causing it pain and, mindful of the spines on its cheeks, he quickly killed it with his club and opened it to clean it.

He had not noticed the weather turning, the wind rising, so absorbed had he been in the business of the lingcod. Washing his bloody hands over the side of his skiff and wincing at the resulting sting, he realized that a chop had come up and it had begun to rain, huge drops quickly forming puddles in the bilge. He had to think quickly. Two small islands lay off the headlands, closer to him by far than the shore, and he decided he had better make for them as directly as he could, as he did not feel he could safely make it to the beach below the rocks north of the settlement. It was a hard row, pushing against the current and the wind, and he wondered if it might not be best to make for the shore, but could not imagine controlling his skiff in the turbulent sea. Finally he dragged his skiff up onto the smaller island's shingle, soaked through to the skin. His bag of bread and cheese was mush.