The Spawning Grounds (19 page)

The crow lifted from its perch, and Hannah watched it fly across the river and disappear into the mist.

“I saw Bran's ghost,” she told Alex. “That day with you in the kitchen.”

Alex nodded. “Then he may not have started his journey south. He could still find his way back to himself.”

“But how do I get the mystery to leave?”

Alex echoed what Libby's grandfather had told her. “Ask Brandon,” he said. “Ask the mystery.”

“And if he doesn't want to go?”

“Then the story will play out.”

“Bran will die.”

“And this valley will drown. Like it did before.”

“You really believe this is true, Alex?”

Alex nodded, and reached out for her hand.

THE NURSE OPENED
the door to Brandon's hospital room and Hannah stepped in. Brandon sat in a chair by the window, staring out at the bare trees in the snow-covered park and the small lake beyond. His face was puffy and sullen from the medication. His shoulders were hunched, like those of an old man, and Hannah felt chilled by the similarity to her grandfather, and to her mother all those years ago.

Jesse had left to make the hour-long drive into Kamloops for supplies that morning. He had made a point of joining her for each of her visits over the last week, worrying she would fuel Bran's delusions with more of Alex's stories. This was her first chance to see her brother alone since she'd talked to Alex on Eugene's Rock.

“Bran,” Hannah said, from the door. He swung his head towards her voice. He didn't look directly at her, but at the ceiling above. She whispered, “Are you in there?” Or was she talking only to this mystery, his illness? She hesitated,
then spoke up so he would hear her. “I've come to ask you something,” she said. “How do I help you? How do I bring you home?”

Brandon blinked at the fluorescent light above her head. If he had heard her, he didn't seem to understand. “Brandon!” she shouted, but she didn't move any closer. “Tell me what I need to do. How do I fix this?”

Her brother startled at her raised voice and looked directly at her but seemed puzzled and afraid. Then his gaze travelled back to the light above. “Where are you?” she asked him.

When he still didn't answer, Hannah slid down the hospital wall to sit on the floor, her face in her hands. After a time she heard a light thump and looked up to see that a hummingbird had hit the window and was now fluttering against the glass, apparently bent on attacking a reflection of itself. Hannah stood to watch the bird. Snow drifted down over the landscape behind it. Bran had turned towards the movement at the window too. The bird flew off, only to return, to beat against the glass as if it, and not Brandon, was inside a cage. Its shadow quivered frantically on the hospital wall.

She had to get out.
She had to get out!
Hannah tried the door, forgetting that the nurse had to open it from the outside.

“Hannah,” Brandon said. She turned to find him looking around the room as if in an attempt to locate her. The hummingbird's wings vibrated on the surface of the glass behind him. “Hannah.” His voice sounded hoarse and
hollow. Then he found her at the door, her hand on the doorknob. “Hannah, wait.”

“Brandon?” she asked.
Is that you?
She crossed the room to put a hand on his arm, but she felt nothing of her brother's presence. He was as absent as her mother had been, though here his body was, sitting in front of her.

“Help me,” he said. “Please, help me.” His accent was that of a native Shuswap speaker. This was not her brother.

The hummingbird flew off and Hannah pulled her hand away. “What do you want me to do?”

“Take me home.”

“They won't let you out.”

“Help me get to the river.”

“The
river
.”

“Please,” he said. “The medicine they give me makes me slow and stupid. I can't do anything here. Let me go back to the river. I'll release the boy. I'll go home.”

Let me go back to the river
, Samuel had told his mother.

“Will Bran come back when you're gone? Will he be safe?”

“I
will
release the boy.”

Hannah studied her brother and then stood, looking towards the door. “Christ,” she said with despair and resignation, and wrapped a robe around him. “Let's go.”

Hannah knocked, and after a minute or so a nurse's face appeared at the small window and she opened the door for them. “Taking Brandon to the visiting area?” she asked as Hannah helped her brother walk through.

“Yes,” she said, but after the nurse left, she steered her brother to the elevator. Hannah guided her brother past the
nurses' station and pushed the elevator button. The attending nurse called, “Taking Brandon for a walk outside?”

Hannah didn't respond.

“You'll need to sign him out.”

“Like hell I do,” Hannah muttered under her breath.

The nurse stood as Hannah and Brandon entered the elevator. “How long do you intend to be out with him?” she called. “You're not checking him out, are you? You'll have to talk to his doctor.”

Hannah pushed the button for ground level.

“Hey, wait!” the nurse shouted, but the elevator doors closed.

Abby barked from her tether line as Hannah helped Brandon out of the truck. She wrapped him more tightly in the robe they'd brought from the hospital and got him to slip on the Crocs Jesse had left by the back door. As she walked him to the river, she regretted not grabbing coats for Brandon and herself as well to protect them from the cold and light snow.

Once they reached the shore, Brandon kicked off the shoes and headed straight for the water, but before he reached it, he stumbled to the ground. Hannah pulled him up by the arm, but he was so shaky he could barely stand. “Help me,” he said. “Help me into the water.”

It was cold, so terribly cold. Both Hannah and Brandon flinched as she stepped him in. Once she was up to her thighs, she would take him no further. Any deeper and the
current would suck them both down. Bran struggled to get out of Hannah's grip and deeper into the water, but she hung on as she fell to her knees with him. Bran turned on his back and Hannah found herself holding him as a preacher might when baptizing a new believer. Bran's billowing hospital robe. The white, freckled skin of his flailing arms. Bran threw back his head, submerging his open eyes and mouth, looking back up at her through river water. He didn't try to right himself. In that moment Hannah understood there was no mystery. Her brother had asked for her help to take his own life.

“Oh, god, no!” Hannah cried. She hauled him to the surface. Brandon coughed and strained for breath as she dragged him back to shore and pulled him partway out of the water. Low overhead, an eagle carried one of Stew's pink flamingos. The plastic ornament was nearly too heavy for the bird; the eagle hit the burnt railing of the bridge with it before landing on the shore nearby to peck at the pink plastic as if it were salmon flesh. A world gone mad, Hannah thought.
She
had gone mad. What the hell had she just done?

“Take me back into the water,” Brandon pleaded.

“I won't let you die.”

“Dying is better than living like this.”

“You're sick. You don't know what you're saying.”

“I know more than you know. Let me go home.”

“Bran, you are home.”

“Hannah,
please
.” He was shivering and his voice was faint. “Take me back into the water.”

“I can't,” she said, and repeated herself as she shook her head. She couldn't sink any further into this madness
with him, into that dark water where her mother had gone. Elaine had drowned here. Instead Hannah rocked this stranger, her brother, as they both shivered in the watery winter light.

Brandon stood on the surface of the water, watching his sister rock his body, waiting to see if she would take the boy back into the river. He had waited for weeks near this shore, resisting the river's constant pull on him, both hoping and fearing the boy would find his way back into the water. If he did, Brandon's body would die as the mystery slipped back into the river. Brandon would then be free to awaken within himself, but only if his body was revived. He needed someone there with him. He needed someone to save him.

He had done what he could to alert Hannah to his presence, taking advantage of her few receptive moments to reach out to her, when she rose from sleep, hoping that she saw him and understood. Only minutes ago he believed Hannah was about to offer him the opportunity he had been waiting for, to find his way home. But then, just as the boy was about to release himself into the river, she pulled him back out of the water. Now he saw Gina rushing from her house. Even if Hannah had second thoughts and tried again, Gina would never allow her to take the boy back into the water. But maybe Bran could still return, if Hannah acted quickly.

He moved closer to shore, calling her.
Hannah
. But, in her panic and confusion, she couldn't hear him. The boy looked
up, though, and clearly saw him. “Help me,” he pleaded.

It was a strange thing to view himself from without, to see his own long torso, his own legs, short for his body, he realized, like his father's. He looked so very much like Jesse, the way he held his head upright—not by intention but by design—his upper body naturally like that of a swimmer's.

Hannah
, Brandon called again.

Hannah turned her head towards Gina as her neighbour called her name. “Shit,” she said and then pulled the boy further onto shore. Gina reached them and together they pulled him up from the water, even as the boy protested, helped him stumble back to the house and onto the deck. Gina closed the door into the living room behind them.

Brandon stood near the shore a moment longer, looking at the old farmhouse that had been his home. The ragged tarpaper on the outside wall; the stack of siding on the front deck. The windows were dark. He couldn't see inside. The house appeared derelict, abandoned. He felt the realization settle into him: he was already dead. There was nothing left for him here now.

He felt the water flowing under his feet, the pull of the river urging him along. After weeks of resisting the water's call, he finally turned and walked the surface of the river over the spawning grounds, then around Dead Man's Bend.

At the lake, he stopped to take one last look back at the farmhouse and the burned bridge beyond, his home valley. Then he joined the trickle of souls making their slow, winding journey down this watery trail, following the same route the salmon travelled down to the Pacific, south, to the land of the spirits.