Grandpère (14 page)

“You’re all too young to go out with boys,” I tell them.

They groan. “Everyone in our school goes out with boys. They’re the only thing that makes school interesting. You’re just old-fashioned, Anzel.”

By this time Grandpère and Angel have caught up. “Why do you call Grandma Anzel?” she wants to know.

“When they were little, after their mom died, I taught them my name so they wouldn’t call me Mom,” I explain.

“Well, you’re just like I always imagined my Grandma would be, and I want to call you Grandma.”

“You can call me anything you like, my sweet.”

They’re as excited as I am about the new plants sticking their heads up through the dark greenhouse soil. I show them how to turn on the hydrant and water the plants with the fine-spray nozzle. They cover the little plants with the blanket when they’re done, and then they want to walk up to the lookout. I ask Grandpère if he wants to come, and he says, “Yes, but I will go up on the bike if you don’t mind.”

I tell them to start up ahead of us, and I go into the house and pack a picnic lunch. Grandpère is waiting by the bike, and by the time we get to the top, they’re sitting by the big rock. The remains of Angel’s fire lie off to the side, just a dusting of ashes left.

Angel tells the other girls about the fire, how she threw all her bad experiences into it and let the flames take them away. “I don’t know why it worked, Grandpère, but it did. I still remember my old life, but it seems so far away, and it doesn’t hurt to think about it anymore.”

“It is a healing that my uncle taught me when I was a young boy and was very sad because of some things that went wrong.”

“What things?” they ask.

“The things I threw away then are gone, just like this fire here is gone. It is not good to bring them back even by talking about them.”

I say, “How about you girls get some dry wood, and we can light another fire. This time we’ll use it to toast our lunch.”

The girls run around to gather dry sticks. Grandpère shaves a dry twig with his jackknife, and soon we have a pretty little fire going. They borrow his knife and come back with willow sticks to cook their sausage over the fire. Grandpère sits on the ground like the rest of us. When I tell him to sit on the bike because it is more comfy, he tells me that the ground is the best place to sit up here because it lets him touch the earth.

“We never had wood floors in our homes when I was young. The first time I slept on a wood floor was in Papa David’s house. I am used to it now, and I like my soft bed with a mattress, but the first time, it felt like I was away from an old friend. The earth sings you to sleep when you lie down on it.” His voice sounds far away as though he’s going to tell us a story, and I wish I had my notepad. But he doesn’t, he just closes his eyes and rocks himself for a while.

Duke shows up. I had told him to stay at the house, but he must have followed us as soon as we left. He doesn’t always do what I tell him. The young dog, Blue, is excited to see Duke and tries to get him to play, but Duke growls at him, and goes over and lies down beside Grandpère. He pats the dog gently and croons to him. Blue comes around to everyone, can’t decide who to lick the most, then gets distracted by a squirrel in the bush and bounces off to his own pursuits.

“Let’s camp up here one night,” Tammy suggests to the other girls. “Can we, Anzel?”

“If you want to. It still gets pretty cold at night, but if you have warm sleeping bags, you should be fine.”

“Tonight let’s sleep in the house, but tomorrow let’s set up the tent here and spend the night,” says Sarah.

“I always wanted to camp out, but I never have. It will be fun,” says Angel, and the girls start planning what they need to camp out.

Grandpère and I get back on the bike, and the girls say they will be down shortly. I try to get Duke to jump up on the back of the bike — he used to ride there when he was a puppy — but he doesn’t want anything to do with it and follows along behind. I feel badly when I see him limping along, but short of manhandling him onto the bike, I don’t really see any choice.

The next day I teach the girls how to drive the four-wheeler. They are all a little jerky on the throttle, but by noon all three know how to drive it. It has an electric shift and will only start in neutral, but sometimes the shifter doesn’t work, so they have to know how to use the wrench to do a manual shift. Sometimes the electric start doesn’t work, so they have to know how to pull the starter cord. Sarah listens to instructions best, so pretty soon she’s the expert on the bike, and Tammy and Angel are content to let her do most of the driving. They make about ten trips up and down the hill.

They take the tent, three good sleeping bags, matches, paper, flashlights and enough food for a small army. I pack the food in a cooler and tell them not to take any food or the cooler into the tent at night; if a bear comes around he will smell it in the tent and try to get in. Then I wonder if I was wise to mention bears, but bears are a real concern, and it’s better if they know how to avoid a conflict with one. I tell them to keep Blue with them; he will sleep in the tent with them and keep them safe.

They laugh and say not to worry, they’ll be fine.

By suppertime they have their camp all set up, and I take a ride up with them to check it out. They have rolled a log over to the tent for a bench, and they have enough dry wood piled up to keep a campfire going for a week. I tell them it looks cozy enough to live in, and they’re all pleased with themselves. They take me back down to the house, and off they go to spend the night in the woods.

Grandpère and I laugh about them camping. He bets they’re all back in the house by morning, but I don’t take him up on it. I remember my own kids camping in the backyard. I don’t think they ever spent a whole night out — invariably they would be back in the house before daybreak — and it was always the other guy who got scared, his siblings were just coming in to keep him company.

In the morning there is no sign of them, but Blue is home in the yard, and we are both surprised. By noon I am no longer surprised, I am worried. I decide to take a hike up there and see how they’re doing. I ask Grandpère to keep Duke in the house so he won’t follow me and set out on the trail to the top. The campfire is still smoking when I get there, and almost all the firewood is gone. There is no sound coming from the tent, but when I unzip the flap, they are all still inside, sound asleep.

The morning is hot, and the sun has really heated up the inside of the tent. My unzipping wakes up Sarah, who bolts to a sitting position, wide-eyed. When she sees it’s me, she visibly relaxes and asks what time it is.

“High noon. I was wondering if you were coming down for lunch.”

“Noon? It feels like I just went to sleep,” she says, reaching over to shake the other girls awake. “You guys, it’s noon already.”

They look as though they had a hard night.

“How was it?” I ask.

“It was so scary. We stayed out by the fire way after dark. Then when we came in, Blue wouldn’t stay in the tent, so we let him out. He went out growling and barking, then he got farther and farther away. After that, we kept hearing noises outside, and we didn’t know if it was Blue or a bear, so we started singing really loud and sang for a long time, and then it was quiet out. But when we tried to go to sleep, someone would hear a noise, and when we listened, we could all hear noises, and we were afraid to go to sleep, then we started telling stories to each other, and then we got even more scared, and none of us went to sleep till it started to get light.” Tammy is talking a mile a minute.

“Why didn’t you jump on the bike and come back to the house?”

“We were scared to come out of the tent, and none of us knew how to turn on the headlights.”

It makes me laugh to think of the girls huddled in the tent, scared silly, and I can’t keep myself from laughing. They look at me indignantly, then all three of them start laughing too.

“Well, here it is noon already, and you all lived through it. Do you want to come back to the house now or are you ready to camp out the rest of the week?”

“Back to the house. You’ll miss us too much if we stay out here,” Sarah says earnestly, and we all start laughing again. They have the tent down and are all packed up in record time.

“Don’t tell Grandpère how scared we were. He’ll think we’re a bunch of wusses,” Tammy says.

I promise not to tell. I’ve been looking around in the soft ground, but there are no tracks other than the dog tracks. I tell them they must have been imagining sounds, and they agree that sounds are a lot scarier in the night than they are in the day. I am still chuckling when we get back to the house with the three campers perched behind me on the bike and all the camping gear piled into the trailer.

Later the girls help me transplant seedlings from the flats into the plug trays, and the job is quickly done. It is most pleasant working with them. They are full of stories of the camp-out, and I notice that as the day progresses, they remember less about being scared and more about how much fun it was.

They all have iPods with them, even Angel. When I ask her about it, she says, “Auntie bought it for me. She said it was a late Christmas present. And we have a really nice computer that we can use any time we want. I have my own email address. It is Anzel at Hotmail. Do you know Anzel means Angel in Carrier? All the Angel names were taken, so I used yours.”

“Yes, my dear, I did know that. I don’t know if your mother knew it when she named you, but I’m glad we share our name. How did you find out about Carrier language?”

“It’s an elective course in our school. The teacher told me my name in Carrier. It’s a fun class, but we still can’t speak the language, we just know some of the words.”

I am amazed that the school is teaching Carrier, and when we tell Grandpère, he starts talking to them in Carrier. They don’t have any idea what he’s said, so he gives up and tells them they have a long way to go.

“We took it for fun. The teacher is really nice, but none of us can understand her yet.”

“I think you have to grow up speaking it to ever really understand it,” I tell them.

At one point when I was young, I wanted to learn it, but with no one to speak it to, the few words I did learn are gone from my memory. Grandmère Clementine could speak English, French and some Carrier, but my mother and father spoke only English to us, and except for a few swear words in French, English is all we learned.

It is so much fun having the girls here that the days fly by. They want to learn everything I do, and since it is warm and the frost has gone out of the soil early this year, I decide to rototill the garden and plant some of the hardier seeds. My old Rototiller fires into life at the first pull, and I start at the top end of the garden. Sure enough, the ground is dry already, and the tiller churns up rich black soil. It is an amazing transformation. The dry, cracked clay that’s on top of the ground after the snow melts disappears beneath the tines, and behind us is lovely, soft garden soil. I keep tilling down until the soil starts clumping, which shows me the rest of the garden is too wet yet, so I quit and put the tiller back in the shop.

With Grandpère directing, the girls have the seeds planted in perfect rows almost as soon as the ground is ready. By the time I’ve put the tiller away, the job is complete.

“The rest can wait a few weeks till I know it isn’t going to snow any more,” I tell them, for a freak snowstorm in April is not unheard of here.

Just as though I’ve called it into being, the next morning we wake up to a blowing blizzard, and before it’s over, there are four inches of fresh snow on the ground.

“What about the seeds?” the girls worry.

“They’re snug in the ground, so it won’t hurt them a bit. This snow will melt away in a couple of days, and they’ll get a fresh drink to help them wake up,” I tell them. “Aren’t you glad it didn’t do this the night you camped out?”

“That would have been quite the story to tell our friends. Hey, you guys, let’s make a snowman before it all melts away,” says Sarah.

They all put on my winter clothes and make a giant snowman. They dress it in a huge straw hat and a scarf and throw a shawl around the shoulders, not to keep it warm, they explain, but to keep it cool.

Chapter Nine

It is early on Wednesday when Clint and Patty and the boys arrive, and as a wonderful surprise, they’ve brought Jesse and Aaron. It was a last-minute decision, Jesse explains. Jessica had to work and they’d decided not to come, but when Clint stopped there, Jesse decided to come along.

The snow has all melted, leaving behind mud that sticks to our boots in great clumps and makes walking a chore. The trees are starting to bud, and the moisture has started to turn the lawn green. The boys are full of energy after being confined in the Jeep for hours.

It’s the first time Jesse has met Angel, and he keeps looking at her with curiosity. “You look so much like Ben but in a girl body,” he tells her, and I can see she’s pleased to know that.

“Anything you want us to do while we’re here?” Clint asks.

“No, I’m caught up on everything here. The girls and Grandpère started the garden already, and the rest of the yard is still too muddy to work on. Let’s just visit.”

Patty has brought the boys’ Lego, and all five boys are playing with it. Baby Seth is walking, though he still falls down a lot. The older boys spend half their time keeping him away from the castle they’re building, but he wants to play too, so they give him his own pile of blocks and try to distract him from wrecking theirs. He likes the little horses, so they give him some of them to play with. He still puts them in his mouth, and they are disgusted to find his slobber on them. “Not to eat, Seth,” Ryan keeps telling him. The girls tell us they’re going to make supper. They don’t want any help, since they tell us they are master spaghetti cooks.

“Go to it,” I tell them. They may be master cooks, but the kitchen looks as though it will need some master cleaners when they are done with it.

“That’s the reason we should have had some girls,” Patty tells Clint.

“Well, we can keep trying,” he answers. “But with our luck, we will probably have ten boys before a girl pops out.”

“Maybe we’ll call it good and rent our nieces for the summers.”

“Good idea, Auntie, we can come and be your slaves for the summer,” calls Sarah from the kitchen.

“I’m coming to stay here for the summer,” says Angel. “Grandma and Grandpère need me.”

For the summer? I wonder, have plans been made that I don’t know about?

The spaghetti may indeed be the best spaghetti I’ve ever tasted. They’ve made garlic toast and even an apple crisp for dessert. No one has denied Aaron any part of the supper, and I wonder if he’s over his allergies. I don’t ask in case Jesse suddenly whisks his supper away and replaces it with dried noodles.

After supper Patty and I tell the girls we’ll clean up the kitchen, and everyone else sits around the living room and visits. Patty asks me if Jane has tried to contact me, and I tell her she hasn’t.

“Don’t you think that’s weird?” she asks.

Now that I think about it, it is weird. Jane must know by now where Angel is. Or maybe the restraining order prevents her from finding out. “She doesn’t deserve to have that girl. She hasn’t been any kind of a mother to her,” I say.

“Mom, Angel is a sweet and good kid, and she didn’t get that way on her own. Jane must have done a few things right for her. Most kids in her situation would be wild and doing who knows what in the conditions she was living in. I think we should give Jane a little bit of credit for how good Angel is.”

I have been so angry at Jane that I never thought of it this way. “Well, I guess she must have done a few things right,” I concede. “Just the same, I’m glad Angel got away from her.”

We make a pot of tea, once the kitchen has been restored to order, and bring it to the living room. Clint, Jesse and Sarah have just finished playing crib with Grandpère, and Angel and Tammy are playing with Seth. Every time he laughs, they laugh too. He is still young enough to think that if his head is under a blanket, he’s hidden. “Peek-a-boo,” they say when they whisk the blanket off his head, and he laughs a little belly laugh. He’s as cute as a button.

“Grandpère, will you tell us a story?” Ryan asks.

“What story do you want to hear?”

“Tell us a story about when you were a boy.”

I get my notepad, and everyone wants to know why. “I’m writing down the stories so that after Grandpère is gone, we’ll still have his stories.”

“Where is Grandpère going?” Jayden wants to know.

“I am going where everyone goes when they are finished here on earth. It is the land past life,” Grandpére says, smiling at the kids. “Let’s see — how about I tell you the story ‘Bear learns from his Mother’?”

The kids nod and settle to listen.

He begins, “Bear was born in the mountains in a little den behind a big rock. The summer before Bear was born, his mother dug the den deep into the hillside under the roots of a large spruce tree.

“In the summer Mother Bear ate everything she could find. In the spring she ate roots from the plants and new leaves, and in the summer her favourite food was berries.

“Later on in the summer, huckleberries would get ripe. She found her friend, Father Bear, in the huckleberry patch, and they spent long hours playing, eating and sleeping in the hot summer sun. They both grew fat and lazy, but bears need to be very fat because they sleep all winter long.

“In the fall the bears came down from the mountains to catch the salmon. They came to the river where they met all their cousins; they all came down to the river because there were so many fish, they could all share.

“The fish had laid their eggs in the river-bed gravel so there would be new fish to go downstream the next year. Then the fish gave up their bodies, and the bear did not have to catch the fish, just find them on the banks and eat. Mother Bear was grateful to the fish for giving their bodies to her.

“Eagle liked the fish, too, and one day while Mother Bear was sleeping with a half-eaten fish in front of her, a strange noise woke her. Eagle had taken her fish, and was eating it right in front of her. She jumped up, angry that Eagle had stolen her fish. She growled and jumped at Eagle, but he just laughed and flew away, and he took the salmon with him.

“Mother Bear was angry that the bold Eagle had taken her fish, and she stood up and growled at him. She put her arms around a willow bush and bit it, wishing it was Eagle she was crushing. She wrestled with the willow bush for a while, then pulled it right out of the ground. Mother Bear was very strong.

“There were hunters in the bush, and they heard her roaring and growling, and they snuck up on her. They were going to hunt her. She smelled them coming, and she knew to run away when she smelled the hunters. She tried to sneak into the woods, but they had seen her, and before she got out of sight she heard the loud boom of the rifle and felt a crease of pain across the top of her back.

“She was hurt, but she could still run very fast, so she ran for many miles till she felt safe from the hunters. She found willows and ate the bark to help with the pain. She dug out the roots of other plants that she knew would make her better. For days she limped around, but soon she felt better.

“Then one day, after the frost had made the ground as hard as rock, when the clouds were heavy in the sky, Mother Bear went home under the spruce tree.

“Before springtime, while there was still snow covering the earth, Baby Bear was born. He was just a little, tiny baby. Mother Bear had woken up just long enough to lick him and his brother clean and then she went back to sleep. Baby Bear and his brother drank milk when they were awake. They wrestled and played in the darkness of their home and slept long hours snuggled in the fur of their mother, till one day she woke up and crawled toward the entrance of the den.

“After a while she left the den, and the baby bears followed her. She dug in the earth for a while, finding roots to eat, then she went and laid under the spruce tree that was growing on top of the den.

“While she lay at the bottom of the tree, the little bears tried out their
sharp claws on the tree bark. To their surprise they found they could climb trees. At
first they only climbed a little way. Then they would fall —
Crash!
— onto their
mother. Pretty soon it was a game. Baby Bear found he could climb very well, and after a
few hours he climbed almost to the top.

“His brother was asleep with his mother at the bottom of the tree. He was so high in the tree that it was too far to jump down. He didn’t know what to do, so he just stayed there. His mother woke up and looked up at him. He knew she wanted him to come down, but he didn’t know how. She sent him a picture of a bear slowly hanging on with his claws, backing down the tree. He tried to do it, but after only a little way, he slipped and came crashing down to the bottom. It hurt, but he knew he was all right, and he followed his mother and brother across the hillside and down to the creek at the bottom.

“When the cubs did something she didn’t like, their mother would reach out with her paw and swat them. They learned quickly what they were allowed to do and what was going to get them a swat. Many times she would make them climb a tree, then make them stay there while she went off. She would send them mind pictures of them staying there, and most of the time they would do what she wanted.

“Mother Bear taught them all the things that bears have to know, where to find the good food, what smells are ones to run and hide from, and where it is safe to play. They met all the animals in the woods and became fat and sleek.

“When Mother Bear met Father in the summer, the two cubs stayed away, but when Mother and Father parted again, she let them come back and live with her. In the fall the two babies were almost as big as their mother, but the den was big enough for all three. The next spring the cubs left the den to go down to the creek and from there they kept travelling. They knew now how to live well and they did.”

Grandpère finishes his story and looks around at us. I’m still scribbling like mad, trying to get the story down in his words, and Seth has gone to sleep on Patty’s lap. It amazes me that these little ones are so quiet while Grandpère tells his stories, but now they have a dozen questions.

“How big was the bear? What colour was he? Why didn’t the father stay with him?” come their voices all at once.

Jesse stands up and pretends he is a bear, stretching his arms out and growling. “This is Papa Bear, and he says you all have to go to bed right now.”

We all laugh at him, but the boys get up and start getting ready for bed. Aaron says he and Pierre are going to sleep together; they’ve been playing together all afternoon and are fast friends. Jesse says they can sleep with him, and I notice with pleasure that Aaron doesn’t have to wear a diaper to sleep anymore.

“Did you just make that story up for the boys?” Patty asks Grandpère.

“The words are not the same, but the story is. The stories for children contained all the children’s lessons. It was through the stories that we learned how to behave. All year there were stories. Each place in the woods and the mountains would contain a story. The names of the places and the people would hold a story. All the places are renamed now, and the ones who kept their names have lost their stories.

“I sort of made it up, and I sort of remember the pictures the stories made in my young mind. I find in my memory that little boy sitting in front of the fire, imagining the two little bears blinking in the light at the end of the tunnel while their mother sleeps.”

While he’s telling us this, he screws up his face, pretending to be a baby bear sniffing the wind, his eyes squinting in the imaginary sun. He looks like a little bear, and we all laugh.

The girls are looking at my notepad. “It might as well be written in Greek. How do you know what this means?” I show them my method, and they are impressed that I can actually read what I’ve written. “When you get the stories written out, save them, and we’ll make a book,” Sarah offers. “The school has a binding machine they let us use.”

“Cool,” I say, and in my mind I see the broken branch of the family tree with the name Sven written on it. I wonder what the girls will think of that story.

Everyone goes to bed. I’ve moved to the cot in the office and am in bed reading for a while when there is a soft knock on the door. Jesse comes in.

“Hi, Son.” I sit up and pat the bed beside me.

He comes and sits down, and I can see he wants to confide but is fighting himself to do it.

“What’s wrong, dear? You might as well just tell it straight.” I take his chin, look in his eyes and smile. He is my sweet son, the one who wears his emotions on his sleeve. I have saved wooden plaques with “I Love You” handwritten with varying degrees of readability, all from this boy.

“Oh Mom, it’s Jessica and me. I don’t think she loves me anymore. She isn’t happy, she’s angry all the time. She says it’s not me, but I think maybe it is. Mom, I love her, but I sure don’t like her sometimes.”

Hearing that makes my heart hurt. I want to agree with him; I don’t like her much either. But he chose her, and they have a responsibility to try to get along for Aaron’s sake. “Don’t forget, Son, you teach people how they can treat you. Can’t you just ignore the anger and try to make her laugh? Angry people need to laugh more.”

“She doesn’t think I’m too funny anymore. Things she used to think were funny just make her go ‘ha, ha’ in a sarcastic way, not funny at all.”

“Honey, people go through these periods when they look at their mate and think, My God, how did I end up with you? But the truth of the matter is that you learn the lessons in your life from the people who are closest to you, and no one is closer to you than your wife. You’re teaching each other some important lessons. Instead of being mad or hurt, ask yourself, What am I learning? and maybe you’ll get through it.”

“Did you and Dad ever feel like this?”

“A time or two. We both had tempers and strong wills, so we butted heads once in awhile. But we could always make each other laugh, and we both learned to say ‘I’m sorry,’ so most of the time we were pretty much happily married. Just try really hard for a while, Jess,” I beg.

He nods, swallowing a couple of times. “Thanks, Mom.” He gives me a kiss on the forehead and quietly leaves.