The Spawning Grounds (17 page)

GINA WATCHED THE
hummingbird feeder hanging in front of her kitchen window, a warm mug in hand, waiting for the bird to return. The Anna's hummingbird had stayed on into late fall, hovering around her window daily, as if trying to get in. She kept the feeder full for its sake.

Her garden beyond was dusted in snow, and flakes still drifted down. Early that morning, the curly tips of the kale had been sugared with crystals of frost. Gina wished she had gotten around to planting parsnips, as they grew sweeter after a frost. She would have pulled them from this winter garden, boiled them and fried them in butter, a little salt and pepper, and eaten them for supper with eggs and bacon. The earthy smell of parsnips frying.

This year she had planted a child's garden, really, with fast-growing, showy plants. Cosmos, tomatoes, sunflowers. Now eight-foot sunflowers drooped wet and sad under the weight of slushy November snow. Ragged things. Grant had
said he would get around to chopping them down, but both he and Gina knew he wouldn't. They would stand until next spring when Grant tilled the ground for her, offering their seeds throughout the winter to the chickadees and towhees that hung upside down on the flower heads to eat from their faces.

The hummingbird finally zipped up to the feeder, and Gina stepped forward to watch the tiny, shining, vibrating thing.

But almost immediately the hummingbird zagged away, and Gina looked past the feeder to see Jesse entering her driveway. The hummingbird hovered over him as he approached the house, but he didn't notice it and it left him to resume its haunt of the Robertson house, beating outside Bran's window. She often saw the bird flickering between the house and the river, or perching on the same spot on the electrical wire above the road, on the Robertson side. So tiny she would miss it if she didn't know where to look.

Jesse reached her garden, and Gina opened the door and stepped onto the stoop to greet him.

Jesse didn't climb the stairs to the porch. He didn't want to presume. He stood below Gina, looking up. “Grant home?” he asked.

“He's working night shift this week.”

Jesse nodded as he looked back at the farmhouse. “I saw his truck was gone. I was hoping we could talk. I've got
a problem, with Hannah. Alex has managed to convince not only Bran but Hannah that the ghost in Dennis's stories is real. She seems to think Bran is possessed by it.”

Gina nodded. “Ah.”

“It almost sounds funny when I say it, doesn't it? Bran possessed, by a ghost.”

“Given the circumstances, and our history together, no, there's nothing funny about it.”

“You're not going to tell me you believe this shit too, are you?”

Gina shook her head. “No. I just mean Elaine—the things she believed, that she saw.”

Jesse took a step up. “I was wondering if you could have a talk with Alex. Tell him to back off.”

“I already have.”

“Can you try again?”

“It wouldn't do any good. He believes the stories. You could try talking to him yourself, but I doubt you'd get anywhere.”

Jesse looked at the reserve across the river. He had already made an ass of himself at the bridge. He doubted Alex would listen to him or even welcome him into his home.

He turned back to Gina. “Maybe you could talk to Hannah then? Make her understand what Bran is going through?”

“I could try. But you already know what she thinks of me.” She paused. “Then there's Grant to consider.”

“He's asked you to stay away.”

She nodded.

Jesse looked past her into the kitchen. The heat from the open door spilled out into the cold; he could see the ripples in the air beside her. “I've caused problems for you, at home.”

“The problems were already here.” She sounded tired.

“But my being home doesn't help, does it?” He stepped back down. “You can tell Grant he doesn't have to worry.”

“You aren't going to leave, are you? I mean, you're not going back to the coast?”

“Not today.”

Gina had once told him she hated his unwillingness to make promises, to tell the lies that were necessary to keep any relationship alive. Hannah had said something similar to him, during one of his rare visits home.

“You don't even pretend to care,” she said. “I wish you would at least
pretend
.”

Jesse looked back at the old farmhouse. It slumped, elderly, in the snow. “You still love him?” he asked Gina.

Gina didn't answer until he looked back up at her, then she shook her head. “I don't know. I'm not sure I ever did. I loved the idea of him.” She shrugged. “Being a cop's wife. The security.”

“Did you love me?” Jesse hated the childish whine in his voice. But her face opened to him, like in the old days.

“I loved you,” she said. “I might have left Grant, if you'd asked me to. If you hadn't…”

If he hadn't fucked around with that girl, Fern. “I was so stupid, about everything,” he said.

“We all were.”

The hummingbird returned to the feeder by the window, and Jesse glanced at it and then at Gina in wonderment. He climbed the steps to join her for a better view, and the hummingbird lifted from the feeder and circled them, hovering in front of Jesse's face before slipping away.

“I think about you all the time too,” Gina said, picking up on the conversation they had had the week of his arrival, the day at the farmhouse when he had faced Hannah with the news of Bran's illness.

“There are so many things I would have done differently,” he said.

“Maybe you can, now.”

“Maybe.”

They waited in silence for the hummingbird to return.

Finally Gina asked, “You want to come in?” She didn't look at him as she spoke, but at her garden beyond. Her tone was hopeful, pleading.

“Is that a good idea?”

“No,” she said, but she stepped back, inviting him into the kitchen. After a last glance at the farmhouse to make sure Hannah hadn't seen them, he joined her.

HANNAH, WRAPPED IN
her Cowichan sweater, wiped the damp snow from Eugene's Rock with her sleeve and sat to wait for Alex to arrive. He had volunteered to cross the river to meet her here, so she wouldn't have to walk through the freezing water of the shallows, which was the only expedient way to reach the other side of the river now. To get into town, people from the reserve had to use a logging road that wound through the hills and crossed a rough, temporary bridge upriver past the mill. Many had parked their cars on the Robertson side of the burned bridge and made the daily hike across the river at the shallows so they could get to and from work. Bridge reconstruction wouldn't start until spring.

A wet November snow had fallen again that morning, covering the fields and river shore. Mists rose up from the pastures, obscuring the farmhouse and what was left of the burned bridge. A cloudbank hid the cliff face of
Little Mountain from view and drifts of fog hung low over Samuel's gravesite on the benchland. The countryside was cloaked in white, a dreamscape.

Abby barked from the yard where she was tied, and Hannah looked downriver to see Alex's dark silhouette, shrouded by mist, as he crossed the river at the shallows. As he drew near, Hannah's heartbeat quickened. She had waited a week for Alex to call, uncomfortable with the thought of going to the reserve after all that had transpired on that bridge—and after. When she didn't hear from him, she tried calling a few times but he didn't answer. Finally, two weeks after the bridge burned, he responded with a brief text, suggesting they meet here.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

Alex sat on Eugene's Rock next to Hannah, close enough that she could feel his warmth, but not so close as he used to sit. As if accompanying him, a crow flew up and landed on the branch of the dead pine above them.

“What the hell is going on?” she asked him. “Where have you been?”

“I wasn't sure…” Alex paused. “I thought of stopping by the house a couple of times, but I saw your dad's truck in the yard. With Brandon in the hospital and you dealing with both him and Stew, I figured I shouldn't—I didn't think this was the right time.”

“You could have answered my calls,” she said.

“You were the one who pulled away, Hannah.”

“The last couple of weeks have been shit. Grandpa picked up pneumonia in that fucking hospital. They've got Bran drugged up so he won't try to leave his room. Anyone would go mental in that place.”

“Is Stew okay?”

“No, he's not okay. He's old and he's sick. His doctor told us to prepare ourselves. He likely won't last the winter.”

“I'm so sorry, Hannah.”

“Why didn't you come see me?” She realized she sounded angry. She
was
angry, but whether it was with Alex or Jesse or Brandon or Stew she wasn't sure.

“Jesus, Hannah,” Alex said. “Your dad doesn't want me in your house.”

“Maybe you remind him of himself.”

“I don't think so.”

“Oh, you have way more in common with Jesse than you realize, Coyote.”

The crow above them shook itself, its feathers ruffled like an old man's tattered coat. “Don't call me Coyote,” Alex said. “I never liked that.”

“Hey, if the shoe fits.”

“Have you seen me with another girl since I got back?”

No, she hadn't, but she feared it.

“Did you ask to meet me just to guilt me out?” he said.

“No.”

“What then?”

“I need to find a way to help Bran.” Hannah looked down, running a finger along the fish carved into the rock.
“This thing, this mystery—there must be a way to get rid of it. You told me Libby tried to save her son. What did she do?” When Alex didn't immediately respond, she added, “You did say you would tell me the rest of Libby and Eugene's story.”

“When you were ready.”

“I am ready.”

Alex studied her face.

She took his hand. “Please.”

Alex let go to rub both hands across his knees, but he nodded. “All right,” he said. “A story.” From the dead pine above, the crow peered down at them, as if listening.

Eugene had forbidden Libby from taking Samuel to a winter gathering in her grandfather's
kekuli
. Eugene feared she would leave him. He feared she and Samuel would catch the contagion that had spread up the rivers with the returning salmon, as the people moved camp to fish. A terrible spirit had taken possession of the isolated valley as winter hit, sickening many of the children and several of the elders. But Libby stole Samuel away, riding bareback on her mare across the shallows with the boy, intent on saving her son from what was, in her mind, a more immediate threat.

To Libby, entering the side door of the
kekuli
was like entering the warm embrace of her grandmother. Here was a familiar place of winter gatherings, where her extended family beat their drums and sang and danced, where the
sacred stories were not only told but relived. But Samuel cried when his mother brought him inside the dark mound. Her grandfather, an old shaman, played peek-a-boo with Samuel from behind his mask to jolly him out of his terror, but the old man only managed to frighten the child further.

Libby had once seen her grandfather put on his mask to find the lost soul of a baby who had become ill. He reeled the child's spirit back on his song as if it were a fish hooked on a line. He had inhaled the child's spirit into his own body, breathing deeply and shuddering as it settled into him. Then he'd leaned over the baby, to push the soul back into the boy with his own breath. Libby had watched the child awaken into himself and cry out, as if in relief. Perhaps her grandfather could do the same for her son.

He inspected the boy's face, pulling up the lid of each eye to peer into the child's pupils. But instead of preparing himself to journey down the spirit trail, he directed her to join the singing and to watch the dancers.

“If I'm here much longer, my husband will look for me,” Libby told her grandfather. “Please help my son.”

But the old man only pointed again at the three young men who danced in the flickering shadows at the far side of the pit house. “Watch now,” he told her.

Two of the men had wrapped a rope around the waist of the third and held the rope taut between them. The man in the centre whirled so that the rope wrapped ever tighter around him. He let out a cry and threw his arms wide, and he was in two, his legs dancing separately at the side of his torso. His legs continued to move away from his body,
dancing down the length of the rope as his upper body danced down the rope in the opposite direction. A man cut in two.

Samuel leaned into Libby, terrified at the vision.

“It's all right,” she whispered. She had seen the dance before. “He will come back together as one. Watch now.”

The man's legs danced back to the centre of the rope, just as the man's body did, turning and turning until his hips and stomach joined back together. The two other men dropped the rope and the dancer was whole again. Her grandfather patted her hand, and Libby understood why he had asked her to watch this dance. This was her son's nature and perhaps her own nature now: like this man, Samuel was not of one spirit, but two, of two worlds.

“The mystery has control of the boy,” he told her. “I may have been able to help him if you had brought him to me sooner, but Samuel's spirit is already well down the spirit trail. I can walk that path only so far. And no one can walk to its end and return. We only make that journey after we die.”

“Then how do I save Samuel?” she asked. “How do I bring him home?”

“If there is a way,” he said finally, “the boy would know. Ask the mystery within him.”

“He told us to let him go back to the river.”

“Samuel is too young,” her grandfather told her. “The mystery can't complete his mission through him. He wants to go home. If you take the boy to the river, the mystery
will
release the boy, in the way your husband lets fish go when
he doesn't want them, when they're too old or too small. He'll slip from the boy and swim away into the river.”

“And if Samuel's spirit doesn't return to his body?”

“Samuel will drown.”

“I won't let my son die.”

“Are you willing to walk the spirit trail yourself to lead him back home?”

Libby didn't give him an answer. Her grandfather didn't expect one. He knew the depths of a mother's love.

The old man gently smoothed the hair on Samuel's head. His hand smelled of smoke and cedar. And from the smoke of a darkened corner, Libby's grandmother appeared, dressed as an eagle, holding an eagle feather, to sing and to dance in circles around the fire, swooping, lifting and descending as an eagle would.

“My wife is a powerful shaman,” the old man told Samuel. “She gains her power from her guardian, the eagle. The eagle soars so high, she can see the whole river of our lives: what's come before, what's here now, what's ahead for us. She warns us to what's coming, so we can ready ourselves. These are the gifts the eagle gives my wife. These are the gifts my wife brings to our people. She dreams the future. She tells us we're entering a time of terrible change. Watch now.”

The old woman raised her arms and downy eagle feathers manifested from the black above their heads to flutter down like snow. The feathers went on falling as long as she danced. Libby looked up through smoke and falling eagle feathers to the ladder that led to the hole at the centre of
the ceiling, the men's entrance to the pit house, to see her husband's face looking down.

Hannah looked up to the crow that watched them from the tree above. “So Libby would have to die to save her son. Did she? Did Libby die for him?”

Alex shook his head. “She didn't get the chance. That day Eugene found her at the gathering inside her family's
kekuli
, he dragged Samuel out and told Libby to go live with her sister. He thought she was poisoning Samuel with the old ways.”