The Spawning Grounds (12 page)

HANNAH WOKE WITH
a start to the sound of her mother's voice calling her name. She lay in bed confused, thinking her mother was still alive, waking her for breakfast, but it was dark at her bedroom window and her mother had been dead eight years. Still in those waters between dreams and wakefulness, she turned to sit on the edge of her bed, her feet on the floor, and listened, hoping to hear her mother's voice again. The old house cracked as the wood frame contracted in the cold, and in that moment she felt sure that Brandon wasn't in the house with her. This certainty, this
knowing
, held the same charge as when she knew—
knew
—that her mother had drowned, even before her father had found her body.

Hannah listened for the thump of music, the soundtrack of the computer games that Brandon, until recently, had played deep into the night. But the house was quiet. She got up, slid on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans and walked down the
hall to stand by her brother's half-opened door. His room was dark. Night air flowed in from the open window, carrying the smell of fallen leaves.

“Bran?” she called. When there was no reply, she pushed the door all the way open. The bed was empty. In the light streaming in from the hallway, the image of the crow with the eyes of a woman stared back at her. She headed for the bathroom. “Bran?” she called again.

“What is it?” Jesse asked.

Hannah was startled to find her father in the doorway of the bedroom he had once shared with her mother, a room she'd kept unused and closed. In her half-awake state she had forgotten he was staying here. He wore the grey boxer shorts and navy T-shirt he slept in. His hair was rumpled and his face was softened by sleep, making him appear younger, the father of her childhood.

“Where's Bran? Isn't he here?”

“I'll deal with it.”

“What do you mean you'll deal with it?”

“I'm sure he's okay,” she told him. “He probably just went for an early morning walk. He does that sometimes.”

Jesse hesitated and then stepped back, almost but not completely closing the door between them. He would go back to bed, she thought, just as he had slept through most of their childhood illnesses. Her mother had been the one to nurse them through the night.

At the bottom of the stairs, she turned into the living room, hoping Brandon was watching TV with the sound low. No one was there, but the window facing the river was
wide open and the breeze fluttered the curtains. Hannah went to close it, and there was her brother, staring back at her from outside, naked.

“Fuck.” As soon as she spoke, he headed away from the house, into the first haze of dawn.

Hannah slipped barefoot into her rubber boots and threw on a hoodie. The October air was crisp as she opened the door and hurried out onto the front deck. From the doghouse, where she was tied for the night, Abby barked.

“Bran!” Hannah called. “For god's sake, get back in the house.” Her brother was a shadow heading for the river. Hannah leapt off the deck and jogged after him. A jay, startled by her presence, flew overhead and cried out. “Bran?”

He ran straight for the boiling pool beneath the narrows. When Hannah was nearly on him, he spread his arms and stepped into the water and the river swallowed him. There was no splash, no outward ripple. The river flowed on as if nothing had disturbed it. Hannah scanned the river, looking for him. On the opposite shore, the street lights were still on along the reserve road. Up on the benchland, a kerosene lantern sat beside the tent over the child's grave—Samuel's grave—as someone kept watch. A fox hightailed it across the path and disappeared into the bush. Then she heard a rustle moving through grass on shore. A coyote, she thought, or a bear. An owl hooted close by and she became aware of someone standing in the shallows by Eugene's Rock, a shadow, her brother.

She jogged down the river path. “Jesus, Bran,” she said as she reached him. “You scared the crap out of me.
Didn't you hear me call?”
Or wasn't that you?
she thought. Brandon's hair was dry. This Brandon hadn't jumped in the river. His pale skin seemed even whiter in the early morning light.

Hannah waded into the shallows and touched her brother's shoulder. “What's going on?”

Brandon just stood there with his hands at his sides, staring at the opposite shore.

“What are you looking at?” She saw only the dark outline of the cliff face of Little Mountain against the sky.

The smell of rotting sockeye was strong now that the spawning season was over. Here they were, walking on the precious sockeye eggs. “Come on,” Hannah said, taking Brandon's arm. “Out of here.”

Brandon wouldn't move. He wavered in the water.

Abby barked and she heard footsteps approaching from the farmhouse. She turned to find her father walking towards them. He had not gone back to bed after all.

“What the hell?” Jesse said as he drew near.

“Dad, he's so cold. I can't get him to leave the river.”

Jesse sloshed into the water in his runners and dragged his naked son back to the riverbank. When Brandon stumbled and almost lost his footing on the slippery river rock, Hannah grabbed his other arm and helped him to the cattle path. There, Jesse wrapped his jacket around his son.

A crow flew by and landed on the dead pine above. The feeling Hannah had on waking resurfaced then, the certainty that her brother was not with her. His face held the same bleary-eyed look Hannah saw on him when she
tried to rouse him from his dreams on school mornings. He dreamed on but with his eyes open. She said his name and shook his shoulder. “Bran, you hear me?”

His eyes finally focused on her. “Hannah,” he said, as if he had been away a long time and this knowledge of her name was a revelation, drawn up from memory.

“What did you take?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“I suppose you're going to tell me you were sleepwalking,” Jesse said.

“Sleepwalking,” Brandon said, drawing the word out. “No, I was awake. My body walked down to the river and I floated after it.”

“Floated?” Jesse asked.

“Like a balloon on a string,” Bran said. “I was the balloon, attached to myself.”

Hannah glanced at the dark outline of the cliff and thought of the pictographs there: along with the figure rising from the lightning bolt, there were stick figures with oversized heads ballooning as if about to become detached, to float away. These, Dennis Moses had told her, were the paintings signifying spirits.

“Things are so different when I'm outside myself,” Brandon said. “Everything is so alive.” The animals, the trees, the rocks, even the river itself had soul, he said. He had seen a coyote with the legs and arms of a man walking along the shore on all fours, sniffing salmon carcasses. The Steller's jay Hannah had startled cried,
Help me!
The crow
on the branch of the dead pine above them had the eyes of a woman.

“The images in your drawings,” Hannah said.

She looked up at the crow, hoping, in that instant, to see what her brother witnessed, but she saw only an ordinary bird—a nuisance that ripped open garbage bags on collection day and strewed soup cans and bread bags across the road.

“This is crazy,” Jesse said. He turned to Hannah. “You do understand how crazy this is.”

Hannah looked beyond her father, past the crow, to the first ray of sunlight that hit the blue Shuswap hills, and in the way of dreams, what had been a numinous truth for that instant in twilight seemed madness in the wakefulness of day.

HANNAH HUGGED HERSELF
as she walked up to the protestors' encampment on the bridge, still unsure, after all these years, if she was welcome within the reserve village or not. Alex's cousin Zach was on duty, sitting in the cab of the BobCat that partially blocked bridge traffic. She worried he would tell her to piss off, stay off their land, as he had with so many whites, even the befuddled tourists who attempted to enjoy a picnic lunch on reserve lands.

But Zach only nodded at her. The cut of his jaw resembled Alex's, but the likeness ended there. Alex was polished, educated in a way his cousin would never be. Zach was a decade older and had never left the valley.

“Alex home?” she asked.

“Think so.”

“Heard you cleaned up at the game last weekend,” she said.

“Yeah, I think we got a real shot at winning the tournament this year.” The Indian basketball tournament, an event Hannah had gone to with Alex and Dennis when she was still a kid.

“You've got to be excited about that,” she said, then felt stupid. She sounded like some patronizing schoolteacher talking to a kid.

“Yeah,” he said, “real excited.” His voice had gone flat, his face suddenly closed.

A coydog—a coyote and German shepherd cross—trotted onto the bridge, then stopped on seeing Hannah. Behind her, Abby barked at it.

“Yours?” Hannah asked.

Zach said, “I've been feeding him these last few weeks, so I guess that makes him mine. A rez stray. Won't take a crap if anyone is around.”

Hannah nodded. Many of the reserve dogs ran loose and unsupervised around the community. Several made a habit of lounging on the gravel road on the reserve side of the bridge. Hannah scratched their ears when she passed them on her way to see Alex, but the dogs didn't respond, as if they could take the scratch or leave it.

Hannah lifted a hand to Zach to signal she was off.

“Say hello to your boyfriend for me,” Zach called after her. Hannah felt her face flush. The coydog kept its eyes on her as she passed it, voicing a barely audible growl. She picked up her pace.

There was a skiff of snow on the top of Little Mountain,
so first snow would likely fall on the valley floor well after Halloween. That morning, frost had laced the leaves scattered under the trees and the grass had been crunchy underfoot, frozen. Stew had told her that when he was a child the frost came sooner, any time from mid-September on, and first snow very often fell mid-October. Global warming. Global weirding, more like it.

Hannah left the bridge and turned down the newly expanded road that followed the river through the reserve to the new development. The stop sign at this crossroads wasn't in English, but in Shuswap. It read: ESTÍL'. Here, just past the bridge, another sign notified white drivers that they were now on reserve land. Just past that, yet another advertised upcoming events the band organized:
Graveyard clean-up October 21. Lunch provided
. On the lawn closest to the bridge, some asshole had propped up a cardboard sign that read
No white men. Women okay, though
.

Hannah kept her eyes on the road as she walked the rest of the distance to Alex's house. She knocked and waited, glancing behind her to see if anyone was watching. She turned as Alex opened the door. “Hey.”

He was dressed in a light blue T-shirt and jeans. His feet were bare. “Well, hey,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“Can I come in?”

Alex stepped aside and she entered the kitchen. “Coffee?” he asked. “I have instant.”

“Tea if you've got it.”

“Grab a chair.”

Hannah sat as Alex filled a kettle and plugged it in. He had inherited this wooden table from Dennis. The surface was cracked and nicked, and the children of the Moses family had scribbled into its edges with pens and dinner knives one generation after the next. During a visit to Dennis's many years before, Hannah had left her own mark, her initials, next to Alex's, carved with the blade he had loaned her. She had been very young at the time and had been in awe that Alex owned a jackknife, a present from his grandfather. Dennis had already taken Alex hunting and they'd spent weekends together in the bush. In a past generation, these hunting trips with his grandfather would have prepared Alex for the time when he would go out into the wild alone, to prove he had the skills to survive, and to find his power—his guardian spirit, the mystery that would protect and guide him.

Dennis said his own grandfather had been one of the last to undergo this ritual. His grandfather's guardian had been a cannibal, a corpse, with entrails dangling that had chased him out of the bush—a shaman's guardian. Dennis had told Hannah and Brandon that his grandfather had continued to see his guardian now and again in the bush around the reserve, keeping an eye on him. The cannibal spirit protected him from disease and injury, and gave him the power to heal, to travel the road the spirits travelled and to bring a lost soul home. That story was why Hannah had come here today, or at least part of the reason.

Alex set down two mugs of tea and sat beside her. “You're looking good,” he said.

She glanced down at his long, slender feet, embarrassed, even though she had hoped Alex would notice. She had taken care with her makeup, choosing colours to bring out the green in her hazel eyes, and had left her auburn hair down around her shoulders, instead of bunching her mass of curls haphazardly in a ponytail as she usually did. She had dressed for him.

“So, what's up?”

When Hannah didn't immediately answer him, he took one of her hands in both of his as if he only meant to warm it.

“I heard Brandon has an appointment with his doctor today,” he said.

“From Gina, right? Fuck.”

“She told me to stay away from him for a while. She says she doesn't want me feeding his fantasies. His ‘delusions,' she said.”

“I wish Gina would stop sticking her nose in our business.”

“She's worried about Brandon.” Alex rubbed his thumb in circles around her palm. “She blames herself for your mom's death, for Jesse leaving. She doesn't want you to lose Brandon too.”

“Dad doesn't want me seeing you either,” Hannah said.

Alex kept his eyes on her hand. “We're seeing each other, are we?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I'm not sure I do. Enlighten me.”

Hannah pulled her hand away. “Forget it.”

“Hey, hey, I was just teasing you.” He took her hand again and squeezed. They sat together in silence for a time until Hannah decided to tell him what was on her mind.

“A couple of nights ago, I woke up and Bran was outside naked. He led me to the river and disappeared into the water. I mean, he was just gone, like he was a ghost or something. Then I really did find him there, but downriver. Bran said he had watched his own body walk into the shallows.”

“His soul
is
out walking,” Alex said. “Brandon led you there, so you could see that for yourself.”

“You said that if Bran's spirit is out walking, he could die.”

“When a person loses his soul and becomes sick, his spirit eventually travels the streams and rivers south. If he reaches the land of souls, his body dies.”

“You really believe in this stuff, don't you?”

“I saw Grandpa's soul out walking, heading down the river, shortly before he passed away.”

“When he was in the hospital?”

Alex nodded.

Stew had taken Hannah to visit Dennis Moses in hospital, just days before he died. They had brought the old man mandarin oranges, a favourite treat, but Dennis had already lost consciousness. The cancer had spread to his brain. He had looked so much smaller in that bed, as if part of him had already left them. Stew had put a hand on his old friend's shoulder before leading Hannah from the room.

“Did Samuel's soul go out walking?” Hannah asked. “After that mystery took him?”

“Libby saw his ghost on the river, while he napped inside their house. She knew he was preparing to leave her.”

“So she understood what was happening to her son?”

“Libby guessed, but she didn't want to believe at first. Remember she had been living with Eugene from the time
she was little more than a child herself. He had attempted to educate her in his ways. A white man's ways.”

Nevertheless, Alex went on, Libby came to recognize the mystery within her son. She knew from the way she couldn't draw Samuel up from his daydreams without shaking him that his soul was adrift. She'd wondered at first if her son was deaf, as he wouldn't respond during these times to the sound of his own name. Then there was his habit of taking off on his own. She turned from washing the dishes in the basin on the stump outside the cabin to find Samuel gone and she panicked, searching first the house, then the yard. She most often found him standing ankle-deep in the river, his mouth moving as if in conversation or song. She worried over how he listened to the other who wasn't there. She told herself that he was singing to himself, as she had done when she was a toddler, at play with an imaginary friend.

Then there were the times, at night, when she woke to check he was still with her, and knew the truth of it. When Samuel had stood in the river, he had stared at the painting on the cliff above, the figure emerging from a lightning bolt.

“Let's say I believe you for the moment,” Hannah said. “What has possession of Bran? I mean, what
is
it? What does it want?”

“Not
it
,” Alex said. “Him. The water mystery has spirit, soul, just like you and me. Everything has a soul: the salmon, the river, the rocks on shore, the trees, the eagles—”

Hannah waved a hand to stop him. “All right, who is
he
? Why is he here? Why did he take Bran?”

Alex released her hand and crossed his arms as he watched her, a small smile playing on his handsome face. He was amused by her, but she wasn't sure why. She had known Alex her whole life and yet now, here, she felt she didn't know him at all.

Alex nodded as if he had come to a decision about her. “All right. I'll tell you the same story Grandpa Dennis told Stew when your mom was sick.”

“About Eugene and Libby? About Samuel?”

“No, about the spirit that lived in Samuel, that lived in your mother. The one that now lives in Bran.”

Alex had followed his great-grandfather across the bridge to the Robertson side of the river. At fourteen, he was already much taller than the old man. Dennis moved slowly with the aid of his cane and Alex was itching to stride ahead of him, but out of respect he walked behind as they passed through the Robertson gate, with its ridiculous pink flamingos, and made their way to the house. Stew's truck was parked in the yard, but not Jesse's.

“Jesse's not here,” said Alex, thinking they should turn back and come another day.

“Good. Then maybe Stew will listen.”

Dennis knocked on the back kitchen door with his cane. Then knocked again. Finally Stew opened the door, his breath stinking of rum.

“You sleeping one off this late in the day?” Dennis asked him.

“Kids are at school. Only time I can sleep.” He nodded at Alex. “Isn't
he
supposed to be in school?”

“He is,” Dennis said. “I've come to see Elaine.”

“Elaine? What in god's name for?”

Dennis didn't answer. He pushed past his friend and, with both Stew and Alex following, made his way through the kitchen and dining room and into the living room, where he knew he'd find her. Elaine sat in a captain's chair in front of the window, facing the river and the cliff face beyond. Since Stew and Jesse wouldn't let her near the river, the mystery had to prepare here. Dennis pulled up a chair and sat beside her. Elaine's expression was blank, her eyes focused on the cliff face across the river, the figure painted there.