The Spawning Grounds (22 page)

JESSE AND HANNAH
stood on either side of Stew's bed. The old man's heart was failing and fluids had filled his lungs. For a brief, terrible moment, time shifted beneath Jesse's feet: He was standing on one side of his wife's bed as Hannah, his young daughter, stood on the other. Elaine's chest rose and fell with the assistance of a machine, but she was already gone—she had died in the river—her body small beneath the hospital sheet. Her essence, that weighted thing that was her, was gone. Hannah had taken her mother's hand but Jesse couldn't stay in that room. He escaped outside, into the snow. Even as a ten-year-old, Hannah was brave, braver than him.

Stew suddenly roused. “Bran!” he cried.

Jesse squeezed his father's hand. “You don't need to worry about Bran. That's my job.”

“I've got to find him, bring him home.”

“Bran is okay,” said Hannah.

“No, I looked for him, but I couldn't find him. I looked everywhere for him.” Stew scanned the room as if seeing beyond its walls. “Is he dead?”

“Bran is fine. He wanted to be here, but we thought it was best if…” Jesse stopped, uncertain what to tell his father. Brandon was in the ward upstairs, recovering from his seizure. He was anything but fine.

“Where's Elaine?” Stew looked past Jesse, at the door beyond.

“Mom?” Hannah turned, as if she might see her mother too.

“She was here just a minute ago. I saw her in the kitchen.”

So, Jesse thought, Elaine was as present for his father as she was for him. But then the past was never far away, just a step through a red kitchen door, a short walk through a dormant garden covered in snow, past an upturned bucket in the wet sand of a sandbox, down the thin path through brown, snow-laden pasture grasses. Jesse made his way through this memory, across the road to the woman casting ashes over her own winter garden.

“Gina,” he said as he reached her. She set the ash bucket on the ground and stood as he took her hand. “Come on.”

She let go of his hand and looked across the road to see who was watching, to the children, Hannah and Brandon, bundled up and playing in the pile of snow-covered sand Jesse had dumped in the yard for them. “Where's Elaine? Is Stew home?”

“She's sleeping,” he said. “Dad's in town.”

“You can't leave the kids alone.” She glanced at the dark window of the farmhouse. “You know you can't leave Elaine alone.”

“The kids are fine. Hannah is just about old enough to babysit. Please, I need this. I need you.” When she still looked doubtful he said, “We can see them from the window in the woodshed.” He had never made love to Gina in her home or his. Instead they found their love like teenagers, in the back of Jesse's minivan down a grassy side road; in the bush on the reserve within the drift of autumn leaves; in Gina's woodshed.

Jesse called to his son and daughter, “I'll be right back. Don't go near the river.”

Hannah ignored her father as if she hadn't heard, but Brandon lifted his bucket to reveal the next perfect turret of his castle. He called out, “All right.” His high child voice.

Gina ran ahead of Jesse, in the gumboots she'd slipped on under her skirt. Jesse overtook her and grabbed her about the waist, and they danced their way to the shed. The smell of lodgepole pine. The axe in the corner. Jesse was already erect as he pushed her against the wall and lifted her skirt. He came quickly and, after rearranging his clothing, they both leaned against the wall near the window as he brought Gina to her own release. A Mustang drove across the bridge carrying an Indian girl dressed in a white ski suit on the hood. The girl waved at the houses as if she was a snow queen in a Christmas parade. Her boyfriend drove the car too fast for such a dangerous game. The risk, the ecstasy of early love.

Jesse heard his daughter call, “Mom!” Then louder, “Mom, stop!” Then he saw Elaine running down the road to the river.

Jesse let go of Gina and bolted from the woodshed, following his wife's wet, bare footprints through snow and onto the bridge. The footprints stopped at the railing. There were two footprints on the top rail.

“Mom!” Hannah called, terror in her voice now. Jesse saw the ribbon of blue scarf floating downstream. Hannah had tied the scarf around her mother's hair that morning, as her mother stared into the middle distance.

Hannah ran downriver, following the scarf as it was carried towards the lake, hoping to see her mother. But Jesse kicked off his boots and jumped into the frigid, roaring water at the narrows, thinking her body may have been caught by the clutching branches of the logjam. The current swirled him first upstream, then down into the water's depth. He opened his eyes to see his wife below him, her clothes tangled in the many sticks that surrounded her. Her head was down, and her arms floated in the current; was she already dead? He pulled her from the debris and fought to bring her to the surface. In the struggle, his wedding band, already loose on his finger, slipped off and cartwheeled away from his reach.

Stew tried to sit up in his hospital bed, but his chest hurt and he felt weak. “Did you talk to Dennis?” he asked Hannah. “Did you ask him what we should do?”

Hannah paused, glancing at Jesse. “He told me a story,” she said to her grandfather. “He said Libby would have to travel the spirit trail to find Samuel and bring him home. But she could never come home herself.”

Stew fell back onto his pillow as he understood. “Yes, of course.” There was only one way to save Bran now. It was a relief, in its way, to step off this shore, to fall back into the water, arms outstretched, to feel everything drifting away from him as he was carried downriver on the current. He sank into his bed and drifted.

“Dad,” Jesse said. “Dad!”

Stew reached back into the hospital room, and held his son's hand as he had when Jesse was a boy. “We had a good time,” he said, to make sure his son fully understood that despite everything, he loved him. Then he settled back into the waters and the current swept him further from this place. The room lost shape, became a white haze around him. He turned circles within it until he found himself on the river shore.

He knew what he had to do. He would find his grandson's lost soul within the countless others making their way downstream. He would lead Bran back home, though he could never return himself.

“Grandpa?” Hannah said. “Grandpa!”

He heard his granddaughter's voice calling, from a distance, “Nurse! We need help!” But he was already walking the river shore near Eugene's Rock. It was snow-covered and the river was rimmed with ice. He took a tentative step onto the open water and found it held his weight.
He took another step and another, in awe of the water moving beneath his bare feet. Then he looked forward, to the curve of the river at Dead Man's Bend, to the lake beyond, and started his long journey south.

HANNAH WATCHED FROM
the living-room window as Alex made his way up the river path to the house. The Christmas tree was still up in the corner, though its branches were now brown and needles littered the floor. She should have taken the damn thing down two weeks ago, or asked Jesse to do it, but she couldn't find the will. She hadn't left the house since Stew's memorial service at the community hall. She and her dad had both been eating frozen leftovers from the reception that followed, until there was nothing left. Jesse had finally taken a trip into town that morning to buy groceries.

As Alex reached the yard, Hannah looked at herself in the mirror at the foot of the stairwell and attempted to tame her hair. She wore no makeup and looked ragged, raw. She pinched her cheeks, trying to draw colour into them, as she made her way through the dining room to the kitchen door. She opened it before Alex knocked.

He looked up, surprised, and she felt foolish, too eager. “I saw you…” she started, then stopped. He was dressed beautifully in a long wool coat. A red scarf was tucked around his neck, playing up his dark colouring. Hannah felt grubby in her sweats.

“Jesse's not home? I saw his truck was gone.”

“He's in town.”

“Good.” Alex glanced away, as if uncertain how to proceed.

“I saw you up at the community hall, at Grandpa's service,” Hannah said. “I tried to find you after.”

“I took off as soon as the service ended. You were busy. I didn't feel comfortable—”

“Surrounded by all those old white guys?” Mostly retired farmers and ranchers and their wives who had known Stew.

Alex grinned that sideways grin of his. “Maybe.” He looked to his feet, kicking snow. “I was sorry to hear about Stew, and about Bran. I hear Bran's back home.”

“He's sleeping.” She stepped to the side, making room for him to enter. “Come in.”

He shook his head. “I can't stay. I just came to give you this.” He pulled a small parcel from the inside pocket of his coat, wrapped in what appeared to be very old rabbit hide. “I was going to give you this as a Christmas present, but then Stew passed away.”

Hannah opened it to find the fur inside still intact. A tiny carved horse was nestled within it, carefully rendered from wood and worn shiny from use. A child's toy.

“It's beautiful.”

“It belonged to Samuel. Eugene made it for him. Libby must have kept it to remember Samuel by. It was passed down through my family. Dennis gave it to me when he first told me the story about Eugene and Libby and Samuel. Given the circumstances, I think Dennis would have wanted you to have it.”

Hannah ran her thumb across the smooth, curved surface of the horse's back. “I don't know what to say.”

“These people really lived and died, Hannah. The story I told you
is
true.”

When Hannah didn't respond, Alex said, “Well, that's all I came to say.” He turned to leave.

“Alex, wait.” Hannah looked down at the horse in her hands as she thought of some way to make him stay. “What happened to Libby after Samuel died? She didn't go back to Eugene.”

“No. She lived for a time with her sister, my ancestor. She lost everyone else—her parents, her grandparents, her brothers and other sisters—in that smallpox epidemic.”

Hannah looked up at Alex. “Did she get back together with her lover?”

“He died, too, along with so many others. Whole communities, whole villages died.”

“But Libby survived.”

“Yes. And her sister lived, or I would have never been born.”

Hannah offered him the horse. “Then you should keep this. You have more right to it than I do.”

“No, I want you to have it. It's important that you understand the story I told you was real.” He paused. “The danger is real.”

Hannah looked back down at the horse in her hands as she chose her words carefully. “I know Libby and Eugene had a son, that he died. The rest—”

Alex didn't allow her to finish. “Have you seen Bran around, I mean…”

She knew what he meant: Bran's doppelgänger, his ghost. “No, not since that day…”

That day hung there between them for an uncomfortable moment, the day they had kissed in the Robertson kitchen.

“Then there's no turning back,” Alex said. “Bran is gone. The mystery will bring down that storm. The valley will be wiped clean.”

“Jesus—you almost sound like you want that to happen.”

“No, of course not. But I think now that it may be necessary. This river has to heal itself.”

Hannah slowly wrapped the horse back in the rabbit skin. She handed it back to him. “My brother is sick. He needs medication and care. There is no mystery.”

Alex weighed the gift in his hand. “Then how do you explain what you saw?”

“Bran's ghost? A hallucination. I was tired, upset.”

“And the storm he brought down, the one that burned the bridge?” They both looked to its remains, the broken deck that jutted out over the rapids. The burned BobCat still perched on the bridge supports beneath, where it had fallen.

“I'm not sure what I saw anymore,” Hannah said.

Alex nodded. “Okay.” He sighed as if there was nothing more he could accomplish here. “I should get going.”

Hannah followed. “Alex—”

He turned back.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I wish—I sometimes wish I saw the world like you do. It seems…” She hesitated. “Magical.”

Alex flushed and Hannah realized he thought she'd accused him of magical thinking, a child's thinking. So many before her had made the same assumption about his culture. But then he said, “It
is
magical.”

“Can I call you?” she asked. She paused. “Maybe we could hang out?”

Alex glanced towards the reserve village. “I don't think that's a good idea.”

Hannah followed his gaze. “You're seeing someone.”

He didn't answer.

“Is it serious?” she asked.

“I don't know yet.”

“We used to be friends.”

Alex pocketed Samuel's wooden horse. “Yes, we did,” he said, turning, and this time he was the one who walked away.