Sisters of Grass (6 page)

And sometimes the thought of never having lived here, never having come to womanhood in these dry hills, stabs at my heart like a thin knife, piercing me with such longing that I am breathless. I have dreamed of a girl and, waking, inhale particles of dust that might have contained her, the seeds of tender grass, the feathery hairs of her horse's fetlock. A girl who might almost have existed, a life that might almost have occurred, everywhere and always.

A photograph of a girl with smaller children, her sisters and brother, dressed as though for church. They are standing in a yard of some sort, fence rails in evidence, a barn in the distance. The girls are all in sprigged dresses, ankle length for the oldest and below the knee for the two younger, pleated bodices edged in narrow lace, cuffs buttoned to the elbow. The boy is wearing a Norfolk jacket and short pants. They are smiling for the camera while behind them a grove of cottonwoods casts textured shadow on the sunlit yard, a rope swing dangles from one tall branch, and off to one side a line of sheets pauses, too, for the photographer's eye, as if to tell the viewer that this family, posed for eternity in their Sunday best, also climbed trees, slept in beds with wind-dried linens wrapping them in an intimate embrace.

This reminds me of my growing collection of textiles for the exhibition, how bed linens are so rarely saved and cherished. Yet one pillowcase has come to me, its edge beautifully hem-stitched and with an intricate monogram in French whitework embroidery, two initials entwined like vines, D and R, around a central M, with exquisitely worked satin stitch flowers and leaves. The fabric is very thin and fine and will need careful treatment for display. But what impresses me most is not its handwork but the knowledge that it was almost certainly intended for a marriage, that lovers might have slept with their heads close upon it. If only there was a way to decode the memories contained in cottons and woollens, buckskin and beadwork, the shape of bodies impressed in fibres.

THE ITEMS ACCUMULATE as I hoped they would. The little jacket's mystery is becoming clear; two Japanese families lived in my community until the War. One of the men was a boatbuilder, and their home was confiscated by authorities and resold to a local family. When I ask about them, I am told about his skill, shown boats that were his design. “And did she sew?” I ask the oldest women, and someone almost remembers that she did. So the jacket might have been a gift or a hand-me-down. I spend some time looking at examples of Japanese quilting, admiring the practicality — padded jackets were made for firemen and farmers in handsome dark blue cotton, the tiny white stitches making them strong enough to withstand many washings. And even earlier, the padding was used to make a kind of armour, channels filled with pieces of horn or metal. The
shibori
dye patterns are fascinating, too —
ne maki
, thread-resist rings, and
mokume
, woodgrain. The impulse to look at the natural world, all its cycles and phenomena, and to mirror these patterns in textiles is a thread of history that pulls me to follow it to the heart of a maze.

And, as well, I am taking the unravelled threads from a life and trying to reweave a companion piece, not the life itself but its image.

May 13, 1906: The Douglas Plateau

From her eastern window under the gable, muslin curtain drawn back by the breeze, Margaret could see morning opening upon the home fields, mauve, pale pink, a faint orange like the opened belly of a trout, gold and dove grey. A few tendrils of honeysuckle ventured in the open window, and a blackbird's piercing whistle. It was too lovely to stay in bed and too early for anyone else to be up and about. She left her bed, pulling up the warm sheets and her quilt with its border of wild geese, and quickly put on her clothing.

Out the door, out to the barn to change into her blessed trousers in the tack-room graced by a coyote skull over the lintel, grabbing a bridle and a tin of oats. Daisy was standing under a cottonwood with the blue roan gelding, and Margaret gave them each a handful of oats, leading Daisy away to be saddled by the barn. She wanted to be up on the ridge before the sun came over, wanted to see the darkened windows flare. It was a Sunday, and everyone was taking an hour or two of extra rest, even the ranch dogs lying on the porch. One of them barked a little as Margaret led Daisy through the gate and then returned to sleep.

Daisy was fresh and sidestepped as Margaret tried to mount; once up, she tightened the reins as the mare snorted and blew, wanting to run. Margaret gave her the chance on the lower slope of the ridge, letting her gallop until she slowed down as the hill grew steeper, sweet oaten breath drifting back to her rider's face. Once on the summit, Margaret dismounted to look back at the ranch as the sun came up. Everything was illuminated, house, summer kitchen, barn, bunkhouse, by clean sunlight. A rooster crowed once, then again for the sound of his own voice. Seeing her home from this vantage gave Margaret a sharp delicious ache, as though she was watching the life of the ranch go on without her. As though she had never been part of it, watching from the years ahead while the trees grew to shelter her absence. Mounting again, she rode east, letting Daisy gallop along the ridge, the smell of young southernwood rising from her hooves.

She decided to ride to the spring range to see if there were messages to take home to her father. The cowhands were camped in a shack they'd fixed up, their bedrolls stretched out on plank bunks, a stone fireplace outside to bake biscuits and grill slabs of marbled beef. An old coffee pot frothed continuously on the back of the fire, the cook adding water until the cowhands refused to drink the bitter brew; then he'd rinse the pot in a cursory sort of way in the nearby creek and start fresh. They were pleased with this cook, a Celestial who'd come recommended from Douglas Lake last year. He had an odd smell, sort of sweet and tarry; Margaret's father told her it was opium, which the Celestials smoked. She found the little jars sometimes when she helped to clean up the camp after the cowhands had moved on to a new range and was fascinated by the writing on them, more like the marks on her grandmother's baskets than the alphabet she knew. And once she found a tin with a rooster on its label. Opening it, she could smell the cook's fingers as he handed her a plate of food, his clothing.

As Margaret rode, she was thinking of the treat in store for her family. Her father had purchased tickets for concert in Kamloops; Madame Emma Albani was coming to the Opera House with several other singers, and Father had booked rooms at the Grand Pacific Hotel. They were going by stage — the Costleys ran stages in summer, fall and spring, and a horse-drawn sleigh in winter — and were making a holiday of it. Father knew Angus Nelson, the rider for the stable, from the days when the Kamloops hockey team came to play at Nicola Lake. Angus had been both team captain and a forward during the last game at the Kamloops rink; Margaret's father had played goal for Nicola. That was 1902, and every year since then, both men hoped to organize more games. They'd meet on the Kamloops-Forksdale road, William Stuart taking harness into Nicola Lake to be mended or planning to look at a horse at Pooley's, Angus Nelson stopping the stage briefly to discuss the possibility of matches for the upcoming winter. It was Angus who told William about Madame Albani's concert: “You'll not have the chance again, Stuart. She has a stop-over en route to a concert in Vancouver, and she's giving this concert as a kindness, really. Bring the family, why don't you? You and I could meet for a drink at the Inland Club and talk about next winter.”

Margaret had never attended any function at the Opera House. She'd seen the building on trips to Kamloops and loved its facade, imagining the opulent interior. She would wear her deep rose muslin dress and the pearls Father had given her for her sixteenth birthday. Musing and dreaming, she rode on until Daisy stopped in her tracks and nickered softly.

Three men sat under a ponderosa; one of them she recognized as George Edwards, who worked, as far as she knew, at the Douglas Lake ranch. He rose and walked toward her, holding his palm flat for Daisy to sniff.

“It's Stuart's girl, isn't it? I've seen you with your dad. Where are you bound for?”

(From my distance ahead of her, waiting in history, I want to tell her, Yes, take pleasure in pearls, yes, show kindness to acquaintances and strangers taking the morning air under a patterned shadow of pines.)

“Yes, I recognize you, Mr. Edwards. I'm going to our spring range, to see if there's anything the men need. It was too nice when I woke up to do anything but saddle my horse and think of somewhere to ride.”

She'd always liked George Edwards. He played fiddle sometimes at the socials, and he often had candy for children he met. People said he'd been a cobbler, and in fact he made shoes for some of the poorest families in the area, never charging them anything. It was odd to see him away from Douglas Lake, though. As if he read her thoughts, he said, “I'm not working for Greaves anymore. There was an accident with the irrigation team, some Chinaman thought I'd killed his brother and threatened to poison me. And who can blame him if he really believed I was responsible, though I wasn't. But Joe and I thought I should make myself scarce, so I'm doing a little prospecting now with Shorty, here, and Louis. We've got our eye on a creek over towards Tulameen. Here you go, young lady, something to sweeten your ride.”

Mr. Edwards handed her a peppermint stick, a swirl of red and white stripes, and she tucked it into her pocket for later. The other two men nodded to her and began gathering up their gear. She waved goodbye and went on her way, thinking how nice Mr. Edwards was, how gentle his eyes under the brim of his hat, which he'd raised to her as if she were a grown woman. She liked to listen to his drawl, and when he sang “My Old Kentucky Home” there were always tears.

The next morning was overcast, some rain and then periods when the billowing clouds parted enough to let the sun through. In the higher parts of the plateau, on Hamilton Mountain, for instance, it would be snowing, the clouds shaking down gusts of it to dust the new flowers and grass. When Margaret's father asked her to take some pinkeye medicine for the new calves to the spring camp, she readily agreed. Daisy had returned home from yesterday's ride with a bruised frog as a result of picking up a sharp pebble in her hoof, so Margaret saddled the blue roan gelding, a bigger and stronger mount. Like Daisy, he was very fresh and wanted to run. They finished the errand quickly, and Margaret decided to take the longer way home, around Chapperon Lake, to see if the cranes had returned to the marsh at the end of the lake. She loved to watch them flying on the thermals in a V like geese but then dispersing in the warm air, gathering again in formation as they met the next current. Sometimes there would be nearly a hundred in flight, though only about ten pairs nested on the marsh. They were beautiful birds, graceful in flight and attentive to their young. She couldn't imagine hunting them, though her mother's people must have done so. She wondered if they tasted like goose, which was delicious. In hunting season her father shot ducks and geese and returned home with strings of them hanging behind his saddle. She hated plucking them because they had to be singed, a disgusting job, but then Mother roasted some with stuffings of apples, dried serviceberries and onions and preserved a few in their own fat to flavour soups in winter.

The terrain near Chapperon Lake was rocky, wooded with tall firs and aspens and, in the draws near water, slender willows and cottonwoods. The gelding was sure-footed, and Margaret was not paying much attention when suddenly he shied to the left, almost unseating her. Ahead, perhaps a hundred feet, she could see a little wisp of smoke rising from behind a low, brushy hill. A mounted rider gestured to a party of men to close ranks behind him. They all dismounted and stepped slowly into the brush. Realizing that she hadn't been seen, Margaret slid down from her saddle and tied the gelding to a tree. She walked quietly towards the smoke, and when she could see the fire it came from, she slipped behind a tree. To her surprise, the men around the campfire were Mr. Edwards and his companions. One of the strangers asked them where they'd come from.

“Across the river,” George Edwards replied. He explained that they'd been prospecting, his voice calm and soft.

The stranger said, “You answer the description of the train robbers we are hunting for, and I arrest you for that crime.”

Margaret nearly cried out, “No, you've got it all wrong, that's Mr. Edwards, we all know him, he plays the fiddle,” but something, a keen fear, made her return to her horse as Mr. Edwards replied, “Well, we don't look much like train robbers, do we?” She quickly untied the gelding, jumped into the saddle and moved away as quietly as she could. All of a sudden there was shouting — “Look out boys, it's all up” — and then gunshots, many of them, and a man screamed, “I'm shot!”

Margaret pressed her heels into the gelding's sides and urged him to gallop as fast as he could. Her heart was pounding so hard she couldn't catch her breath, but she didn't dare pull her horse up until she reckoned she was a mile or two away. When she finally let the gelding stop, he was lathered with sweat, and she was trembling so hard she had to dismount and sit down in the new grass to calm herself, not caring if it was wet with the day's rain.

Closing her eyes, she saw the strangers sneaking towards Mr. Edwards's camp, heard the stern voice of the one who accused the three of being train robbers, Mr. Edwards's calm, friendly reply. She heard the shots, echoes making it impossible to tell whether there'd been three shots or thirty, the scream, the shouting and chaos in the grove of trees. Her horse's eyes had shown white when she'd mounted him, snapped at his rump with her glove so he took off in a scuffle of dust and mud, kicked him to a gallop. Unshod, his feet had pounded the ground without the ringing of metal shoe on rock. She opened her eyes again and got up to make sure he hadn't chipped a hoof or injured an ankle. He was quiet, standing beside her while she felt his legs, lifting each foot to examine it; she heard his tail swish away the flies and felt his breath on the back of her neck as he turned to see what she was doing. She tried to figure out what she'd seen, what had happened to Mr. Edwards. Was it he who had screamed out that he was shot? Was there anyone she should tell? She wondered if she'd been seen by the strangers, but as no one had followed her, she assumed she hadn't. She decided to ride home right away, the day ruined by the unexpected brutality in the brush near the cranes' marsh.

I have dreamed of a girl bent at the waist to make herself low on her horse's neck. Particles of dust in the dream, strong sweat, long cry of cranes across the pastures. Those men under the pines will be remembered — stern faces looking into a camera lens, broken boots, a worn felt hat. In the memory of a girl, riding in search of wild birds, will linger the image of three men sitting in calm air, a battered coffee pot aslant on a piece of stone. A place that might still hold the mystery of shouts and gunshot, the silenced cranes on the edge of water. Where clouds passing over the bodies of the hills might contain the smoke of their cooking fire.