House of Spells
HOUSE OF SPELLS
house
of spells
A NOVE L BY
R. Pepper-Smith
N
E
W
EST
P
RESS
COPYRIGHT © R. PEPPER-SMITH 2011
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE USE OF ANY PART OF THIS PUBLICATION REPRODUCED, TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC, MECHANICAL, RECORDING OR OTHERWISE, OR STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, WITHOUT THE PRIOR CONSENT OF THE PUBLISHER IS AN INFRINGEMENT OF THE COPYRIGHT LAW. IN THE CASE OF PHOTOCOPYING OR OTHER REPROGRAPHIC COPYING OF THE MATERIAL, A LICENCE MUST BE OBTAINED FROM ACCESS COPYRIGHT BEFORE PROCEEDING.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
PEPPER-SMITH, ROBERT, 1954–
HOUSE OF SPELLS / ROBERT PEPPER-SMITH.
ISBN 978-1-897126-87-5
I. TITLE.
PS8581.E634H68 2011 C813’.54 C2011-901965-5
EDITOR: THOMAS WHARTON
BOOK DESIGN: NATALIE OLSEN, KISSCUT DESIGN
AUTHOR PHOTO: ANNA ATKINSON
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PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA 1 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10
This story is for Adrian, Kegan and Dion
and in memory of Tom Pepper.
Contents
I get paid to watch mountains and forests. From the fire
lookout on Palliser Mountain I’ve memorized the peaks,
the avalanche tracks, the bends in the river below, the logging
roads and cut lines. When anything looks different
I see it.
The tower cabin is a standard one-room with a seven-foot
ceiling and four walls of four-foot-tall windows, no
curtains, the chrome-legged kitchen table and chairs under
the east window. My bed is under the south window and
my books line the north sill. In the west corner, a sink
and a small counter with a bar fridge under it, run
on propane. Only the fire finder, a circular table with
a topographical map and two sighting apertures, stands
above the sills.
I go outside to place my pots of basil on the catwalk
banister, watch clouds build over the eastern ridge, beyond
the outhouse and the patch of grass the Forest Service calls
a garden. Below I can see three horses at the foot of the
mountain, a grey and two buckskins, the ones Mr. Giacomo
lost earlier this summer.
Sometimes in that morning light an avalanche track can
look like a column of smoke. Golden conifer pollen drifts
over the Slocan Gorge, wisps of river fog rise off the hidden
bend of the Palliser. Low clouds blow up over the eastern
ridge like water flowing uphill.
Now that I’m alone, memories float in and out of
my mind. I’ve assisted my mother at two births, one in
the spring of
1969
, the other this year. Mrs. Giacomo’s
was the first birth. Her son was born blue, couldn’t be
made to breathe. While my mother tried for a long time,
her mouth over the baby’s nose and mouth, I held Mrs.
Giacomo’s cold hand and she turned to the wall.
I remember the baby’s puckered, bruised eyes, glued shut
with a sticky film and its limp, tiny hands. Finally Mrs.
Giacomo reached for her child, to take it out of my mother’s
arms. She could see there was no hope. She took it under
the blankets next to her chest and then she drew the blanket
over her head.
Even though I was only sixteen years old, I couldn’t
leave her there alone. I crawled under the blanket to rest
my head against her shoulder, and my arms around her felt
so weak and useless. She felt like she was covered in ashes.
Over her shoulder I could see the face of the still one in her
arms. His tiny brow looked puzzled at not entering the
living world. His limp hands were delicate, hollow-boned,
and the skin at his temples pale blue.
Later Mrs. Giacomo would blame my mother for the
child’s death. She would say that my mother had not done
enough. That was the end of a long friendship.
Then this year Rose’s child was born; I was there too.
My name is Lacey Wells and I’ve got a lot to tell you.
I know who the father of Rose’s baby is. His name is
Michael Guzzo. He left last winter before Rose knew
she was pregnant, when the Odin Mill shut down because
of the snows. He left to travel in Central America.
I know why Mr. Giacomo wants Rose’s baby and why
he can’t have him. And I want to make sure none of this
is forgotten.
One night in the winter of ’
68
, over a year before Mrs. Giacomo lost her baby, Rose wanted to see if there was ice on Olebar Lake. She liked to skate and she was waiting for the lake to skin over. She knocked at my window, and we rode bikes in the dark through falling snow to a beach that was packed with fishing huts.
We’d met the summer before, picking fruit in the Butuchi orchards. The Portuguese Alberto Braz would get us up at 5
AM
, hammering at the bunkhouse door. He would drive us into the orchards in the back of his truck, the bed bumping and jarring on the potholed road with a grassy hump up the middle of it and Rose curled up and still trying to sleep, head in her arms on one side of the truck bed. He would really yell at us when we left ripe fruit in the branches that we missed or that was too hard to reach. Sometimes when he wasn’t around, we played soccer on the river road, using a hard green peach for a ball.
Now we rode bikes in the dark to Olebar Lake. Onshore, Rose knelt to put her hand in the ripplets that were washing through the beach gravel. Surprised, she said the water was warm. I’d heard that there were hot springs in the lake bottom, and that sometimes, on nights like this, warm water was pushed ashore by the wind.
She went out wading, trailing her hands, the snow driving in around her.
I took off my boots and rolled up my pants to follow, the lap, lap of water that smelled of fish around my knees, groping over stones with my toes. Skin ice was splintering way out, but near the shore the lake was quivering like a mirror that had nothing to reflect. Hissing snow was drawing over it in wide curtains.
“Let’s go out as far as we can,” I heard Rose say, laughing. “This water is as warm as a bath. I want to dive in!”
“You’ll freeze biking home,” I warned her.
“I don’t care. This is really wonderful!” she said, the snow collecting in a grey cap on her hair and sticking to her eyelashes.
I could hear the low chug of a barge coming across the water. A house appeared in the issuing greyness and in a gabled second-storey window I could see Mr. Giacomo peering out in lantern light as if watching the shore for drift logs. The pilot cut the engine and I could hear the rattle of the anchor chains. The house drifted quietly before us. I could see Mr. Giacomo quite clearly in the second-storey window. His father was an Italian stonemason from the valley and his mother was Japanese. Though he was in his fifties, in the lantern light his skin looked smooth and clear, like a young man’s, and I liked him for it.