Celia's Song (25 page)

“You want to burn all this?” Ned asks, as if Celia is insane.

“Only after his daddy sees what he missed.”

No one likes her plan. Momma thinks about the torment of Stella's daughter and how she and Celia had said that they thought they could kill the man who did this.

“Because you're angry?” Ned's question sounds like an accusation.

“What has anger got to do with this? This hungry boy, who this man refused to feed, hung himself. His father needs to feel that.”

“But he didn't know Jimmy was born.”

“Don't talk shit, Ned.” Celia surprises herself. She has no idea she has so much steel inside, nor that it could enter her voice so easily. “Every man knows how babies are made. No woman would call a man and tell him she needed to see him sixty days after a romp unless there was a child. He had to know there was a child, and he didn't come. It's been twenty years. He can add. The child is grown up.”

Momma caresses each picture as though she knows Celia will have her way and burn them. She passes them along to the other women, one at a time, and each woman does the same thing.

“It will be done. The old man agreed,” Celia finishes. “You can participate or not, but it will be done.”

“Does he know the story?” Momma whispers.

“I told him exactly what I just told you. He didn't ask the questions you are asking me now.”

Jim slaps his knee and looks around, signalling the men to leave the room. They head outside and begin to light up when Jacob walks into the yard. He looks older, more grounded, and a couple shades darker. They invite him into their circle, telling him what they could remember of Celia's story, each filling in the other's blanks and then letting him know what she wanted them to do.

“Sounds good to me. I want to talk to that old man anyway.”

Jim is stunned. Jacob always waited until everyone had pretty much made the decision for him before he committed himself to anything. He wonders if Jacob understands what he is saying yes to. They look at him. Jacob carries on. “You don't go visiting emptyhanded, isn't that the rule? You don't go calling on a man who's building his house without bringing your tools. You said that more than once in my life, Grandpa. That means to me that everything is about fair exchange. He honoured her with an offer. She honoured his offer. Twenty years of pain and suffering is what has to be paid up. He owes her something. She just means to make him pay up.”

“That's a chilly point of view. Did that mountain freeze your blood, boy?” Ned stomps out his cigarette.

“As a matter of fact she warmed me, Grandpa. She warmed me.”

“These women seem to mean to do this.” Steve lets the words go, careful not to be too arrogant. “Maybe we ought to be figuring out what our responsibility is here?”

“To figure out how we are to live with it,” Ned answers. “But I don't believe we have ever done a burning to scorch the insides of a boy's father before.” He spits. He does not like the direction this conversation is travelling in.

“I don't believe we ever had a father in this family who refused to face fatherhood before. For sure we never had a suicide because of it.” Jacob drops this plain and simple, as if it's the morning news.

Ned shakes his head. What happened on that mountain? Ned takes a good look. Jacob looks settled in the manner of a man who has made a decision that has settled the direction his life will take. It makes Ned suspicious and just a bit nervous, because it includes burning pictures of his cousin. Jim shrugs when he sees that the die has been cast, and that all that is left is for him to get in line. He adds, “I think we ought to have both dads at the funeral then. The one Jimmy thought was his dad is just as responsible as the one who wouldn't claim him.”

“How is our little girl?” Jacob asks.

“She's all right, but her mom shot herself. She's still in there. She'll live. Probably her arm will work fine too. Damn if this isn't the craziest time to live.”

INSIDE JIM'S HOUSE, ESTHER
tries to persuade Celia that
vengeance
is
mine, saith the Lord
.

“Esther, honey,” Celia says in the warmest tones her voice can muster, “we love you. Your God knows my brother loves you, but I am not up to your Christ or your God today. I need to hear something old. I need to know that the way my poppa looks at my momma is still my birthright. I need to know that the men here are not going to get all twisted up into the hungry side of that old serpent and eat us alive, tormenting us every step of the way. I need to know that someplace deep inside them they really don't want to do this. The only way I can know that is to do this burning in this way.”

LATE THAT NIGHT, STACEY
repeats her sister's words to Steve. He believes he understands and says so to Stacey.

“Explain to me this vengeance of Celia's,” she barks.

“It isn't about revenge. You can't love your son unless you know how to love a woman; unless you truly love a woman, you can't truly love your children. I think I know, because I was relieved when my daughter finally grew up — maybe too relieved. I didn't desert her, but I'm not sure my staying was much more than duty.”

“Now I feel like I'm standing on the white side of the bridge,” Stacey says.

“It's about consequences. Every society has rules; you break them, and there are consequences. My side of the bridge has one set of rules and the consequences match. This side has another. You can't have it both ways. If you aren't going to call the cops on whoever did that to that child and make him endure our consequences, white town consequences, then you have to live with yours. Celia means to bring the consequences to bear on the man who deserted her son. If she is wrong, then someone in this village better figure out what the old consequences would be and tell her that. Meantime, I was told that I had to come here and live your way. Ned told me that the responsibility of men is to figure out how to live with decisions made by women and that's what I am going to do.”

“Well, I don't have to go along with it, unless Momma says I do.”

“Up to you.” Steve gathers her up in his arms to sleep.

NED, JACOB, AND JIM
appear at Melvin's house early, dressed in their best black suits. Jim is the one who asks him to get dressed up in a suit and come to the cemetery. The looks of the men tell him they are not giving him any choice, so he finds his funeral clothes, gets dressed, and follows them out the door.

IN BOSTON BAR, AN
old man makes ready to build a longhouse. He knows he has to do this burning. But this isn't the main reason he is heading for Celia's village. He heard the longhouse calling him. That longhouse wants to be built and he is curious to know how she will shape herself.

JACOB SITS IN THE
car, singing songs Ned recognizes as belonging to Momma. When had she found the time to sing to this boy? Jim sings along. They sing every song Jacob and Jim know on the trip back home. Ned isn't up to singing with them at first, but the sound of the songs catches him and pretty soon they are all singing and tapping. As he sings, Ned begins to realize that he doesn't agree
much with his wife or her family, but he goes along with her because he doesn't know any other way to be. She is his personal hurricane, stirring up the dust inside him, whirling him this way and that. The boys don't seem bothered by what they are doing; they seem to be a whole lot happier than he is.

What is it that has me twisted this way while these guys just shrug, roll up their sleeves, and get busy doing whatever's necessary to make it happen? He pulls into his wife's village and looks toward the mountains behind. They seem to be smiling at him. Above the peak closest to the village, an eagle glides. She's moulting. Damned if he doesn't see a feather drop. He stops the car just over the bridge and gets out. The feather continues drifting toward the ground. Ned watches it as it lands a few metres from his feet. He runs over to where it has landed and puts out his hand to his son. Jim scrambles for some tobacco. Ned picks up the feather. They all circle around it; even little Jimmy's stepfather is standing in the circle. Ned looks at him, half-surprised. Melvin gives him a half shrug.

THE WOMEN ARE GETTING
ready for the burning, cooking food that the dead like to eat, when Jacob corners his gramma and tells her that he needs to talk to her. She follows him to the living room.

“I'm going to ask that old man to build a longhouse.”

“You want to dance?”

“Mm-mm, I want to dance someone else in there too. I know
who did this to her.” He shifts his look to the little girl who seems to be waking up for longer periods now.

I am excited, probably too excited, but I can't help it. Rebuilding the longhouse means restoring the position of the serpent as
protector.

“You want to make a winter dancer out of him?”

Jacob raises his eyebrows. “This can never happen here again, Gramma.”

She smiles and touches his shoulder; she knows what he is up to and approves. These are my children: my Celia, my Jim, my Stacey, and my Jacob. She smiles. The tired melts as she dreams up an old song that she had heard Gramma Alice sing just once. It was so pretty.

Momma takes special care of the food. Stacey thinks she is stepping rather lightly for a woman about to fry a pair of men. Jacob looks different too. Jacob saw Steve step out of the shower and he watched him turn into Stacey's bedroom without saying a word to either her or to Steve. Steve's things were everywhere. Jacob saw his razors in the bathroom, his jacket hanging in the closet; he looked at it all and decided they had moved from keeping company to something more permanent. He took a moment
to shake Steve's hand and say, “Welcome home, Pop,” and laugh.

STACEY IS RESTING ON
the porch, and Jacob comes out to join her. He fingers the little stone on her finger and raises his eyebrow.

“Too many changes for me to swim in,” she tells him, and begins to explain.

He holds up his hand.

“Don't you hold up your hand when I am trying to tell you something.” She grabs his hand as she speaks. “Jacob, do you worry who your daddy is the way Jimmy did? Funny, you can't feel the love for your son unless some man loves you like Steve does me, like I do him. I am not like Celia. I couldn't just go on without you.”

“I worry about it constantly, Mom. I even saw him once. I wanted to walk up to him and say ‘Hey, Pop,' but some lead got stuck in my butt and I just stood there gaping at him, looking and wishing. I'm not Jimmy, though. I never worried about anything quite like Jimmy did. I wanted a dad like everybody else had across the river. I didn't want to be some orphan like half the kids on this side. I can't have that right now. I'm too old, and he won't have me. Unlike Jimmy, I have to find some way to make my life fine with that piece of information.” He grabs his mother's hand. “In the middle of all that craziness with that little girl, I told Uncle Jim I couldn't watch them work with her. He told me that he had climbed the mountains
near the village and that I would be able to watch if I climbed them, so I did. Jimmy had the same piece of information, Mom. He chose not to. I don't know why he took his life. I do know I can't bring him back. I miss him more than I've ever missed anyone, but I can't just up and leave. I have to find some way to live with all this.”

“Now you sound like your gramma.”

“Who's talking about me?” Momma stands behind Stacey with Celia. “I swear I have seen more water leaking out of this family's eyes in the last week than all my days before.” Momma takes off her apron and hands it to Stacey.

“Yes, but you know where your family is,” Jim says from behind her.

“Amen,” Esther says from behind him, completely missing the point. Jim turns, wraps his arms around her waist, and rocks her back and forth.

The serpent is hungry. He is bestial. He crawls around looking for food. He wants to be swallowed. He lurks in the shadows
behind bushes wherever he hears the shrieking sound of rage or
desperation. He knows there will be a meal. Once swallowed, he
will consume courage; in the night, when the mouth of the beholder hangs slack and open expelling toxic breath, the serpent will escape with whatever he manages to eat. He is crazed. There is so much
food here and it makes his blood pump into a frenzy to imagine
the banquet that the doubt that corrodes the minds of the villagers
presents.

“What? … Are you sassing me? … What'd you say? … C'mere …” The belt rises along with the desperate screams of the
children. The serpent has found a meal. The child whimpers from
a closet in the dark and the serpent wraps himself round the child.
The child is lonely when he feels the serpent; it feels like someone
trying to comfort him. His mouth hangs open, letting whimpers
drop. The serpent enters. Tomorrow the child will find a cat, tie
a rope to its tail, and hang it over the bridge, smiling as the cat
wriggles itself loose of its own tail and plunges to the icy raging
water below. The serpent lies in the meadow, satisfied for a while.
At night he will awaken and hunt another meal.