Sisters of Grass (10 page)

“I'd rather not talk about it any longer.” Margaret got up and poured strong tea into mugs for the three of them and brought a bowl of sugar to the table. Then she went out to the covered box in the shallows of the creek where her grandmother kept the milk. It was foolish to be upset with someone who was a stranger to the country and its happenings, she thought, and anyway it wasn't like her to fly off the handle. He seemed quite nice, and Grandmother obviously liked him enough to feed him and invite him on plant trips. She returned to the kitchen and drank her tea, listening to the young man describe his journey across America by train to Seattle and then his meeting with Mr. Teit at Spences Bridge.

“He is a knowledgeable man, I can see why Dr. Boas likes him so well. He says he takes out hunters who visit from all parts of the continent and he helps to run his father-in-law's orchard at Nine Mile Ranch. He told me all about the irrigation system they have for their trees. I wouldn't have believed apples could produce so abundantly in that dry country, but he says the soil is ideal, they only have to supply the water.”

“Yes,” Margaret replied. “We trade beef for Spences Bridge apples. My father knows the Smith family, and we get boxes of their apples. And they're wonderful, especially the Grimes Goldens. Mrs. Smith wins prizes for them. Last year she won a silver medal for apples she sent to the Colonial Fruit Show at the Royal Horticultural Society in London, England. It was on the front page of our newspaper. I like to think of her apples travelling across the ocean to win prizes!”

“Mrs. Smith is marvellous. I met the family while I was with Mr. Teit, and I was impressed with Mrs. Smith's dedication to her orchards,” Nicholas responded. “It's only a year since her husband died, Mr. Teit told me, and she's determined to carry on his work. The orchards were lovely, too. I think there's no flower more perfect than a branch of apple blossom. My mother has an apple tree that she's coddled along in our garden in New York. It's called Seek-No-Further. I can't imagine a better name for anything. But the trouble is, although it's covered with blossoms each spring, there are only ever a few apples. I don't suppose there's another tree nearby to pollinate it.”

They finished their tea and then gathered some of Grandmother's baskets together to take on their hunt for plants. Margaret's favourite was a berry basket of split cedar root with a design of natural red and dyed-black bitter cherry bark. It had two soft deerskin straps so that it could be worn on the back, leaving the hands free for picking. Grandmother had made it as a young woman, excited by all possibilities of design, and had used a complex pattern of deer hoof and entrail. There had been another colour, sun-bleached stems of reed grass, but over the years the basket itself had faded and become soiled from use, and now the grass stems were indistinguishable from the rest of the roots.

“This is very beautiful,” said Nicholas, looking at the basket's intricate pattern. He ran a finger along the design to feel the texture of the imbrication.

“My grandmother is really an expert basket-maker,” Margaret told him. “The one you're using is a shape she adapted from the fish baskets to be used as a saddlebag. See, it's got a flat side so it can sit against the horse's flank. That design is meant to be summer lightning, something you'll see quite a lot of if you stay around this area for long. And the basket Grandmother is using is a more typical shape, sort of conical.”

“Do you make many of them, Mrs. Jackson?”

“I have what I can use for now. Some of the ladies make them to sell to whites, but I don't want to spend so much time on a basket and then not know where it's going. I give a few away — to Margaret's family, of course, and the priest has one, and Mr. Teit bought some for a museum, some that I had and wasn't using, some that were done completely in the old way, one or two even that my mother had made. He told me it was important that they be saved to show how we did things before the whites came.”

Nicholas nodded. “I agree with him. I've seen some of the Coast Salish baskets in the Smithsonian Institution, and all sorts of other things, too. So many people have no idea about native cultures, and the museums are one way to educate them. Not the best, I'm afraid. The artifacts always look out of place, somehow, even when they try to give them a context.”

They were walking in back of the Reserve towards the small sloughs that dotted the higher fields. Margaret was looking for nodding onions, which her grandmother liked to use to flavour meat. The bulbs themselves were pretty to look at, pink and elongated, and they tasted delicious. They were eaten fresh, but some were dried for winter, tied into bunches. Soaking the dried bulbs in water for a few minutes made them taste almost fresh in the winter soup pots. They were also looking for the pale mauve lilies which could be found under pines as soon as the snow melted. These were a favourite spring food.

(I want to hold the girl, smooth her hair, tell her that whatever happens, I'm waiting in time to trace the lines of memory caught in a basket of coiled root, fine imbrications of cherry bark and reeds. Her hands with their long fingers, the slight bones of her ankles, the cup of her throat. Thinking of her, my own throat tightens.)

“What kind of grass are we walking on?” Nicholas asked.

“Oh, this is mostly bunchgrass, the best grass for horses and cattle,” Margaret told him. “Our cattle feed most of the year on this, all the cattle in the valley do, and they make the best beef. Even the wild game in the valley tastes better than anywhere else because of the air and this forage.”

By now Grandmother Jackson had dug up many of the pretty green onion plants, their flowers still furled in the tight green sepals. She was careful not to take too many from any one place, and she shook the dirt from each loosened clump, mindful of the tiny bulblets that were too small to take; these she tucked carefully back into the soil. In a grove of pines they found lots of mariposa lilies, and Margaret explained that they ate many kinds of lilies, but this was usually the first in the spring to be ready, and its season was quite long. Many of the others were dug after they'd flowered, the blue camas and orange tiger, for instance, but these ones were a spring treat, eaten raw or else steamed if you could find enough to take home.

They came to one of the little sloughs and sat on the shore to rest. Bulrushes surrounded the slough, and Margaret pointed out a yellow-headed blackbird nest, fastened to a clump of bulrushes like a tiny basket. “Look, there's the male, see, he's got white patches on his wings. He's nervous because we're here. There must be a red-winged pair nesting around here, too, because you hear them whistling. Do you hear, just there?”

Nicholas looked at her in surprise. “How do you know this?”

“You mean, about the birds?”

“No, I mean all of it! The plants, the baskets, and yes, the birds, too. I hear the sound, of course, but it just sounds like, well, birds.” Nicholas smiled. “I guess I've always imagined myself to be an outdoorsman because my family has a summer camp in the Adirondacks, in upstate New York. But I couldn't tell you what birds were there, or plants, for that matter, apart from roses. My mother loves roses and is always pointing out the best features of her moss roses and her bourbons. And I guess I know a bit about insects from fly-fishing, because you have to know what flies are active before you choose your fly to cast.”

“Well, that's only how I know anything, really. You've seen that my grandmother knows about plants, and she takes me with her when I come to visit. And I ride with my father as often as I can, when I'm not helping my mother or at school, and he loves birds. Anyway, how could you live here and not notice the blackbird's whistle and want to know what bird makes that sound? It's one of the first signs of spring, especially at home, because a creek runs through our home ranch, and lots of blackbirds nest there. I love to lie in my bed in the morning and hear them calling back and forth to one another. Father says the spring song is all about territory, but I think it sounds joyous, like music.”

“I'd like to meet your father. Would that be possible?”

Margaret was suddenly tongue-tied. She tried to imagine this unusual young man in her family home, talking to her father. Would her father like him? And why did it matter? He was looking at her so intently that she swallowed quickly and found her voice.

“I'm sure you'd be welcome at the ranch anytime. Perhaps you'll call on us for Sunday dinner?”

Her grandmother encouraged the young man to talk about his work. They learned he was twenty-two and had completed a university degree the previous year. Although he had intended to read law, as his father had, he had become interested in the anthropology course he'd taken in his second year of studies. Encouraged by Dr. Boas, he pursued a degree in this field and had assisted his mentor in preparing monographs on the Indians of the west coast for the American Museum of Natural History. But it was the monograph written by Mr. Teit that had really captured his attention, and Dr. Boas had suggested that he make the translation to partly fulfill the requirements for a further degree.

That night, over a supper of lily bulbs and more of the sweet fried trout, Margaret told her grandmother about the concert in Kamloops. She tried to describe her feelings as she listened to the unfamiliar music, which spoke to her as clearly as a well-loved person might, spoke of life's changes and deep love of country and home with such yearning and emotion. She spoke of meeting Madame Albani at the Slavin house and of riding Thistle down the deserted morning street with its shadows and phantom carriage tracks telling a strange tale of the evening before. Her grandmother listened, saying little, wondering at this girl, beloved and yet mysterious. She had felt helpless when her own daughter had gone to live with the priest, wearing a severe black dress, but she had not felt that her daughter contained depths she was incapable of knowing. Jenny had been swept up in the tide of Christianity that had been too overwhelming at the time to resist. So much had come with it, been tied to it and lost by it. It took Mrs. Jackson some time to find a way to live her own life comfortably in the face of such alien authority. And she discovered it wasn't the gods or spirits who had changed. They could be found still in their old haunts, in the sky and water, living in the body of an animal, asking nothing more or less than they had always expected. This other god that the priests worshipped and encouraged the Indians to worship — there was no more sign of him than of any other Great Spirit, though the priests said he was all-seeing and all-knowing and could number the hairs on a person's head, such was the greatness of his love. Mrs. Jackson felt this was not of much use to a person and that a god as powerful as the priests said he was ought to have done something worthwhile, like curing the terrible outbreaks of smallpox or other diseases brought by the whites. In the house the priests had built for this god at Douglas Lake, you could look through the high windows during Mass and see hawks or ospreys teaching their young to fish. The shadows of clouds moved across the hills like herds of foraging cattle in the early morning light, and this was something to think on while the priest spoke dramatically in a language the Indians had never heard before.

Since the day that Margaret had arrived with the crane's bone and asked to be told about the ceremonies of the young women, the old woman had treasured the times the girl came to her, eager to learn about plants, about baskets, about her own girlhood before the ranches had filled the valley with fences and cattle. She marvelled at the girl's ability with horses, her boundless energy, her willingness to do any task her grandmother set out for her. A few times they participated in the women's sweat baths, and it was comforting to sit in the small lodge with the girl beside her, waiting for the heated rocks to be brought in. On the floor, fresh fir boughs and juniper they had cut earlier in the day. Margaret had almost fainted the first time, squatting with the three other women in the intense heat, but her grandmother held her arm and helped her to breathe deeply. After, they had plunged into the creek and scrubbed themselves with branches of fir. The old woman's sadness at her own daughter's early departure to the priests was soothed by her daughter's child.

Lying in bed that night, Margaret heard Thistle stirring outside the window. The horse, tethered to a fence, whickered nervously as coyotes called to one another in the far hills. Margaret got up and looked out. There was a high three-quarter moon, and the yard was silver with its light. She felt excited, although she wasn't sure why. Watching her horse in the starry yard, she felt an urge to go out quickly and ride in the moonlight. Making sure her grandmother was asleep, she quietly left the cabin, wearing only her light cotton nightdress. Approaching Thistle, she spoke to the horse softly, so as not to startle her. She untethered her, vaulting onto the mare's back, and using her hand on Thistle's neck to guide her, she directed her to the trail leading up behind the cabin to the moon-burnished hill. What was this feeling of wanting to enter the night? And how could you, in your mortal form? To disappear into blackness, the place where you stood in the dust untouched by your footsteps, hearing the coyote's cry as a part of yourself, a thrilling cry from your heart's own centre, wanting to share the riddle of this darkness, punctuated by stars, Oh, but with whom? Thistle was reluctant to leave the safety of the trail, and Margaret could feel her tremble when the coyotes yipped, a little nearer by now, so she turned back on the trail and returned to the yard.