The Spawning Grounds (26 page)

“I'm so cold.”

He shifted her so that she was in his arms. “The river's rising fast. We've got to get out of here. Can you stand?”

“I think so.” Then she remembered. Gina and Jesse and Bran at Dead Man's Bend. “Bran.”

“He's across the river. The floodwaters are so high I'm not sure we can cross.” He paused. “Hannah, I don't think he made it.”

Together they looked through the curtain of rain at Gina and Jesse both huddled over Bran's body lying prone in the mud. Jesse's shoulders shuddered and his head was in his hands. He was sobbing.

“I've got to get across.” She dragged herself on hands and knees up the slick bank and coughed up more of the water from her lungs. With Alex's help, she struggled to her feet, slipping before she finally gained ground.

Alex raised his voice to be heard over the torrent of rain and rush of river water. “We'll need a stick if we're going to try it.” He rummaged in the nearby bush as Hannah shivered, waiting for him. He came back with two makeshift walking sticks. “Let's go,” he said.

They kept their heads down as they pushed through the wind and stinging rain on their way to the shallows. Alex stepped into the river first, the water up to his thighs. “Come on,” he shouted, holding out his hand. She took it and, hand in hand, they pushed their way through the water. At the centre point of the shallows, the rush of water was too much. Hannah slid and fell, gulping water. Alex pulled her back up and wrapped an arm around her. “Hold on to me,” he shouted. She wrapped her arms around his neck and, with one hand around her waist and the other on the stick, Alex dragged them both through the floodwaters to the opposite shore.

The water had risen nearly to the top of the eroded bank that rimmed the pasture. Hannah scrambled up out of the water and onto the muddy bank. Alex followed, splashing
through the muck and rain. Rain fell so thick Hannah felt she was swimming through it, breathing it, drowning in it.

Gina stood as Hannah and Alex sloshed through muddy water to reach them. “Thank god you're all right,” she said. She took Hannah's arm and, together with Alex, led her to Jesse and her brother. Beneath the barbed-wire fence that hung over the bend, Jesse held Brandon and rocked him. Hannah was sure her brother was dead. She understood why Jesse rocked him, why Brandon had rocked himself within his blue room. She rocked herself now. “Oh, Brandon,” she said.

But then her brother's face turned to the sound of her voice. “Hannah,” he said.

She put both hands to her mouth. “You're okay!”

Bran pointed past her. “Look!” This time Hannah saw the boy when he did. A Shuswap kid about Brandon's age, naked, standing in the middle of the swollen river, standing on the rough, muddied water, as if it were uneven ground.

AS JESSE DROVE
Hannah and Brandon home from emergency, the rain still fell so hard the wipers couldn't keep up, and he had to peer out the truck window to see the road in front of him. A passing car threw a wash of water over them. Lightning hit the fields on either side, and static crashed into the music on the Chevy's radio with each strike. Jesse clicked off the radio. “Christ,” he said. “When is this going to let up?”

“Not until it's done,” said Brandon.

Jesse laughed, thinking he had stated the obvious.

“Until what is done?” Hannah asked him.

The set of Brandon's mouth was grim. “We shouldn't go back home,” he said. “Not yet.”

“Where do you suggest we go?” Jesse asked him. Brandon didn't answer. He looked straight ahead, at the wash of water pouring down the windshield, obscuring the landscape around them.

They drove on. Trees along the side of the road thrashed back and forth. Jesse dodged one that fell in front of them, then struggled to control the truck in the raging wind. The driver of an approaching truck flashed his lights and honked as they met, apparently trying to tell him something, but Jesse kept going, driving through the stream of water that covered the road. The rain fell faster than it could drain.

Alex was standing at the red kitchen door under the roof overhang when they finally arrived in the farmyard. He held his jacket over his head as he sloshed towards them through the pool that covered the lane. Large drops pelted the water around him as if he was under fire. Hannah opened the truck door.

“We've got to go now,” he said.

“What are you doing here?”

“I couldn't get back across—the river was too swollen. I waited inside. Hope you don't mind.” He looked at Jesse.

Jesse leaned over Bran to talk to Alex. “Thank you for helping to find Brandon—and for saving my daughter's life.” He paused. “I'm sorry about the things I said to you in the past.”

“We can worry about all that later,” said Alex. “Right now we've got to go.”

“Go where?” Hannah asked.

“Doesn't matter. Anywhere on higher ground. The hall.” He pointed at the community hall on the hillside above them. “Grant's going from house to house, warning people in the valley to leave. The logjam at the narrows has started to collapse. It isn't going to hold much longer.”

Above the remains of the burned bridge, muddied stormwater had broken the banks and threatened to burst the log dam completely. Water already churned muddy and thick with debris into Gina's pasture and had begun to flow into Stew's fields as well. “Shit,” said Hannah. “Spice.” The mare was struggling to maintain her footing in the rushing water within her small pasture at river's edge. “We've got to get that horse out of there.”

“Where's Gina?” Alex asked. “Can't she take care of it?”

Jesse said, “After she followed us into emergency, she headed back to her apartment.”

“I've got to get Spice,” Hannah said. She got out of the truck and ran through rain to the gate. Across the road, Spice had fallen and was now sliding backwards along the fenceline as the current tugged her along.

“Hannah,” Alex called. “It's too dangerous.”

“She'll die if I don't help her,” Hannah called back.

Alex splashed through the water behind Hannah for a few yards, then stopped. “Hannah, don't. There's no time. Look.” The torrent had undercut the bank at the entrance to the burned bridge and a chunk of gravel road slid into the water. The river was about to overwhelm the logjam at the narrows, threatening to flood the valley.

Hannah turned back to Alex. “Go!” she shouted. She nodded at the yard of the farmhouse. “Get Abby into the truck and head up to the hall with Jesse and Brandon. I'll ride Spice there.”

“I'll give you a hand.”

“No. Spice doesn't know you. There's nothing you can do.” When she saw Alex hesitate, she called out again. “Go!”

Hannah climbed through the fence and waded to the horse. The mare was still down, backed into the corner of the fence where the ground had given way. Her back legs were stuck. She was without a halter and Hannah had no rope. She looked around in desperation. By the time she got to the barn and back, the horse would be swept into the river.

Hannah slid her belt from her jeans and looped it around the horse's neck, fastening it. Then she pulled with all her strength. “Come on, Spice, you can do this. Let's go!” At Hannah's urging, the horse struggled to her feet but then slid and fell again. The water was rising so quickly, Hannah thought Spice was lost, but then the horse hurtled forward onto more stable ground.

Hannah waited a moment as the horse recovered, patting her neck, then jogged with her through the water-filled pasture. As they reached the gate, Hannah heard a boom like that of an explosion and turned to the river. The thundering water had pushed through the dam, lifting the logs from the narrows. Water rushed out in all directions, surging into the pastures, flooding the reserve road, and pulling a soup of logs and debris in its wake that travelled downriver as a mass. On the far shore, trees toppled and power poles fell one after the other, the lines sparking and sizzling as they hit water. Cars were lifted and turned by the current. One flipped on its side, exposing its undercarriage. The people from the reserve had already scrambled to higher ground. Many of them now stood in front of the grave tent, staring down on the chaos below. The water was rolling across the orchard towards the Robertson farmhouse.

“Jesus, come on, Spice, let's go.” Hannah jumped on the horse, grabbing her mane, and slapped the mare's rump. “Go!” she shouted. “Git!” The horse galloped up the road with Hannah struggling to stay astride. She hadn't ridden since the day of her mother's funeral. Jesse had waited with Brandon, Alex and Abby in the truck at the gate to make sure Hannah was okay. As Hannah charged past on the horse, Jesse revved out of the yard, fishtailing in a spray of water onto the road. Following Hannah, they raced the floodwaters up the hill to the hall. As Jesse parked the truck, Hannah remained on the horse as Spice cooled down, and she saw the swollen river swallow the valley floor. The development at the mouth of the river was completely destroyed. Only the cabs of the machinery were visible on the construction site. A pickup truck slid sideways towards the lake, dragged along by the rush of water. A half-finished house had been torn from its foundation and floated on the current.

Soon her grandfather's outbuildings, the ancient granaries, the machine shed and, finally, the barn were engulfed. One by one, the buildings slid sideways before collapsing into the waters. “Not the house,” Hannah said under her breath. “Please not the house.” But the river ate the farmhouse, too, lifting and then shifting the old building from its foundation. The rush of water dragged the building forward, and the house that Eugene Robertson had built floated like a boat over the drowned pasturelands, then downriver and around Dead Man's Bend.

JESSE RUMBLED IN
the loader through the pasture towards the riverbank. Grasshoppers flew from his path, their wings shimmering in the heat of the summer day. On the opposite shore, logs and trees—deposited there by the flash flood that had burst the dam at the narrows that spring—lay in a row like dead awaiting burial. The development at the mouth of Lightning River was a tangled mess of upturned boards, trusses and two-by-fours. The reserve houses closest to the river had been torn apart, too, and his own farmhouse now sat on shore near the shallows, half in and half out of the river, sagging on one side.

For now, Jesse, Hannah and Brandon lived in a mobile home they'd parked near the crumbling foundation of the old house. Jesse planned to rebuild—the insurance would cover the cost—though all that would take time.

He stopped by the river and paused to take in the work ahead of him. The back of his elderly Chevy pickup, parked
in the pasture closest to the river, was filled with bundles of willow and cottonwood saplings. A pile of logs and a second pile of boulders, unloaded there by dump trucks a few days before, sat ready. Jesse would move these down to the riverbank at Dead Man's Bend. He would lay the logs in rows along the shore to reinforce the bank and anchor them in place with rocks. Then Hannah and Alex would plant the young trees. The cuttings would spring to life and grow; their roots would hold the banks in place. Bush would once again line this river, as it had before Eugene Robertson and the other farmers and loggers had deforested the banks. Eventually the roots of those trees would take over as the logs beneath them rotted. Silt would no longer choke the spawning grounds and the estuary. The foliage would cool the river. Perhaps, over time, as the river healed itself, the sockeye would return.

Just as Brandon had, Jesse thought. His son sat on the pile of boulders now, watching the river's flow with keen interest, as if waiting for someone who was late. His doctor said he was making good progress. Brandon now spoke of his future, of going to art college, to Emily Carr. He took his medication voluntarily, and the new drug he was on appeared to be working, though Brandon didn't see his recovery that way. He claimed that after his grandfather had died, Stew searched for him on the spirit trail and helped him find his way back home. Brandon continued to maintain that his visions—of the transforming animals, the boy on the river—were real and not hallucinations. Jesse supposed it didn't much matter now, as Brandon also said he no longer saw these spirits. They were lost to him.
And Jesse no longer worried about Brandon leaving the house in the night or taking his own life as Elaine had, but still he was watchful.

Brandon looked up and waved at Jesse, then leapt down off the rocks, out of the way, thinking his father was waiting for him. Before starting to move the logs, Jesse glanced out the side window of the cab, to make sure Hannah wasn't in his blind spot. When he didn't see her, he scanned the landscape and spotted her walking hand in hand with Alex on the far shore, approaching the footings of the new bridge that was still under construction. As Hannah stooped to pluck a sprig of wild rose, her curls covered her face. Then she stood to face Alex, handing him the thorny stem heavy in rosehips. He bent the stem and tucked it into her hair as if it was a crown and she was a dark faery queen. She raised herself on the balls of her feet and kissed him, holding his face with both her hands.

In that moment Hannah made Jesse think kindly of himself. He was not his damaged father, nor his absent mother, not if he'd played any part in creating this beautiful woman, one capable now of such open affection and trust. Perhaps, this late in the game, he could still be a father to Hannah. He would, at the very least, help support her through university. He
must
be the father to Brandon, who would require his help for the unforeseeable future. Jesse could not leave this place, nor did he want to now. The thought was a revelation, and a relief.

Hannah and Alex linked hands again to hike towards the grave, and Jesse turned in his loader seat, back to the boulders, the logs, the river and his son.

Hannah rearranged her makeshift crown of rosehips and walked ahead of Alex, up the rise towards Samuel's grave. Here, at the edge of the bush above the river, ripe saskatoon berries hung on thickets of scruffy shrubs, their pomes laced with white spiderwebs that were nearly impossible to remove from the small fruit. Many of the berries not picked or eaten by birds would dry on the bush, shrivel like tiny prunes and stay on the stems throughout the fall and winter, feeding overwintering birds. Hannah pulled a lanky arm of the shrub down and pinched off several berries, rubbing off what she could of the spider's web, before popping them in her mouth. Seedy, not terribly sweet.

Red ants scurried on the path in such numbers that Hannah couldn't help but step on them, but she tried to avoid them nonetheless, walking at times on tiptoes. She felt Alex watching her as she walked. She felt the pleasure of her own hips.

Once they reached the grave, Alex held the tent flap open for Hannah, and the smell of earth rose up to greet her. “Careful,” he told her. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim light, and then she found herself right at the edge of the grave, looking down at the tiny backbone of the child curled like a sleeping infant.

The band council would hold a burial ceremony here in the coming week and the grave would be filled in shortly after. The band had come to an agreement with the developer to leave the remains of the child in place, by the side of
the road, where they had been found. A concrete slab and monument would both mark and protect the grave from vandals or unscrupulous collectors who might seek to make an artefact of this poor child's bones. Construction crews would begin work on the development all over again at the mouth of the river once the bridge was rebuilt, and once the rezoning changes went through. Development almost always won out over other concerns. At least, she thought, this developer would not have the Robertson land, Jesse's land, her land.

Hannah had wanted to see Samuel before the grave was closed, before the monument was built, before development finally took over this place. She felt compelled to come here, to make some kind of connection with this child, her distant relative, and to the story that had led her to this peace, to Alex. She unzipped the tent window to cast more light into the grave, and the nugget of gold cupped within the child's finger bones shone. All at once Hannah was struck by this proof of Alex's and Stew's stories—Dennis's stories. Samuel
had
found that gold in the river. He had carried it to his mother. She had buried it with him in this grave. Perhaps the rest of the story was true as well.

“Did I really see that mystery the day I drowned?” Hannah asked Alex. “Or was that just a hallucination?”

“You tell me.”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head.
Don't presume to speak of what you haven't seen or experienced
, Dennis had said. She supposed she could presume to speak of what she herself had seen. But what would she say? The only thing
she knew with any certainty was what Alex had been telling her all along: the history of his people and hers wasn't back there, in the past; they lived it every day. The proof was here, in this tent. Dig away just a few shovelfuls of soil and here was their story, at her feet.

Libby had dug this grave for her child in a hurry: the evidence was in its shallowness, the misplaced bones. Very likely, Libby feared capture. She would have dug up this child's body from the reserve cemetery upriver and wouldn't have wanted to alert anyone to her labours, so she would have picked a moonless night. She would have dug in the dark, without a lantern, with that white picket fence of the grave around her. She had removed the cross before digging, propped it against the picket fence. Her child's grave was like every other here, and there were so many others. Only her son's name, chiselled into the cross, set it apart:
Samuel Robertson
. She had stolen the shovel she used from the bridge construction crew. The wooden bucket she had brought with her was the one she used to haul water from the river; she had woven the large basket from cedar.

Libby was in her early forties now, and drunk, drunk on a bottle of whisky she had bought from a white bridge worker with her body. The man's name escaped her at the moment, though he visited her cabin often. A regular. He liked her, too, and said he was thinking of staying in the region once the bridge was complete later that fall. Ernest, that was it. Ernie. Another damn Englishman. She stopped to take a drink from the bottle before returning to her digging.

In the river below her, many of the sockeye from that year's run were already dead, floating belly up in the water. But the smell of their rotting carcasses did not overwhelm the place as it had when Libby was a child, as so few salmon now returned.

After a time, she felt her shovel hit wood; she had reached the plain pine box Eugene had built for their son. She scraped away the remaining soil and used the shovel to pry the lid open. Water had seeped into the grave, rotted the bottom of the coffin and allowed the worms and insects to eat Samuel's garments and flesh. All that remained were his muddied bones.

Libby gathered her child's bones in the bucket and basket, feeling for them in the dark of the grave; the skull first, then the leg bones, the arm bones. Finally, she found the tiny, fragile bones of the fingers. These she tucked within the pocket of her apron. She left the hole of the grave open, left the empty bottle of whisky, too, and carried her son's bones to the river to wash them, bone by bone, beside the carcasses of dead sockeye.

Light had already hit the tops of the blue Shuswap hills that surrounded her; she would have to hurry. She carried her child's remains up to the benchland that overlooked the narrows, beneath the mystery painted on the cliff. She dug a shallow grave and arranged her son's bones within the earth as he would have slept within her as a foetus. She draped his bones with a new robe she had sewn from her own dress, a dress she had made from fabric Eugene Robertson had
bought for her many years before, and placed within the delicate bones of her son's fingers the nugget of gold he had once brought her as a gift, the gold she had first given back to the river, and later retrieved, as a memory of him. Then she buried her child once again and swept his grave with the branches of rose bushes to keep Samuel's spirit from roaming this earth.