Somewhere In-Between (23 page)

She turns her attention to a larger photograph, a studio portrait in which a middle-aged First Nations woman and a teenage girl are sitting on a bench. Standing behind them, with a hand on each of their shoulders, is a younger version of Virgil Blue. Although Virgil's copper skin is a shade darker, he has the same handsome face, the same high cheekbones, aquiline nose and wide-set amber eyes as the woman. The young girl does not.

The startling combination of blue eyes, fair skin and dark hair reminds Julie so much of Darla that it takes her breath away for a moment.

Replacing the photograph Julie glances down at the open roll-top desk. Like the rest of the cabin, the oak desk is neatly organized. Envelopes, rolls of stamps, pens and pencils, are stored in the small cubbyholes. Neat stacks of yellow-lined notepads fill the top ledge. Nothing unnecessary litters the dust-free desktop, except for an envelope lying on top of a handwritten letter. Curious, Julie allows herself a glimpse of the exposed salutation,

With Love,

Melody.

Feeling like the intruder that she is, she hesitates for only a moment before picking up the envelope to uncover the rest of the page.

... I hope you are paying attention to the presidential campaign. Do you remember what you said the night you left? I do, word for word. You swore that you ‘would not return until the day a man of colour was elected president of these United States.'

In our mother's memory, I intend to hold you to that oath, my brother. And when that day comes, as I am certain it will, you and I will visit her resting-place together.

An odd sense of relief rushes through Julie with the realization that the letter writer, Melody, is Virgil's sister. She shakes her head.
God, what has gotten into me?
Stop
.
Enough of this.

A sudden commotion outside causes her to drop the envelope. She swings around at the sound of Pup scratching and whining at the door. A heartbeat later a shadow flits across the window and familiar footsteps pound across the porch.

Ian doesn't bother to hide his irritation when Julie opens the cabin door.

“What's going on?” he demands, grabbing at Pup's collar.

“Nothing. I just brought the grouse over.” She slips outside, closing the door behind her.

“I had no idea you'd left.” Ian says, letting go of the straining dog as Julie bends down to calm him. “He was going crazy in the mudroom; when I opened the door he bolted down the road.” He straightens up and looks past her. “Is he home?”

“Virgil? No.”

“And you went inside. Julie, that's not right. It's the man's home. Neither you, nor I, have the right to go in when he isn't here.”

The impatience in his voice startles her. She stops petting the dog and looks up at him. For an entire year now, his patience with her, their patience with each other, has bordered on indulgent and a part of her is almost relieved to see him lose his.

“Yes of course,” she says, standing up. “You're right. I shouldn't have.”

Ian opens his mouth, then whatever he was about to say is lost as he closes it, turns and walks away.

“Come, Pup,” Julie says and follows, anxious now to get away before Virgil returns and finds them there. Once she catches up to Ian at the end of the driveway she has to hurry to keep up with his long stride. As they near the ranch house she asks, “Have you ever noticed the dreamcatcher in his cabin window?”

“What?”

“The dreamcatcher hanging above Virgil's kitchen sink. It's identical to the one Levi gave Darla.”

Ian misses a step, then staring straight ahead, continues walking, the muscles in his jaw working.

“Really,” she continues, breathlessly. “It's exactly the same, right down to the black feathers hanging from the bottom.”

“So what? They must make thousands of those things to sell to tourists in town. They're everywhere.”

“Yes, but what are the odds that there are two so similar... I even thought for a moment that it was Darla's—”

Ian halts in his tracks. “Don't.” The word is a low growl in his throat.

“Don't what?” Julie stops short, takes a quick step back and looks up at his determined profile. “Don't say our daughter's name out loud?”

He turns to her, his face a mask of sorrow. “Don't do this. Don't make everything about...” frustrated he holds up a hand. “Just stop. We have to put it behind us. Jesus Christ, Julie, you have to find some closure. Find a way to let go.”

She opens her mouth in protest, but nothing comes out. Let go? If she hears that line, or the word
closure,
one more time she will scream. What does it mean anyway? Closure? Let go? Of what? A wound that will never heal? Watching his retreating back she whispers, “I can't.”

Over the next few days the returning cattle fill the south pasture. Most mornings and evenings Ian helps Virgil spread hay bales in the field for the gathering herd. Julie spends most of her time looking at the world through the eye of her camera, taking photographs at every opportunity, then photoshopping any promising ones and emailing them to her sister. And even the odd one to her mother. She is certain though—and she has to admit that perhaps it is deliberate—that the ones she chooses to send to her mother will do nothing to improve her opinion of life in the ‘wild': an opaque layer of ice forming along the shoreline; the glint of sunlight captured in the icicles hanging from the willow branches; a bruised sky above the north ridge, dark with the promise of snow.

Thursday morning she sets up the new tripod on the front porch and takes random shots of the cows out in the pasture, docile and complacent in their captivity, milling about with fresh snow dusting their backsides like powdered icing sugar. Later, while playing with the settings on her camera in the den, through the back window she catches sight of a horse and rider at the end of the field. She pulls on a sweater, rushes back out to the porch and re-attaches the camera to the tripod. Focusing and refocusing she clicks over and over while the silhouetted image grows larger in her viewfinder. And as it does she decides that, regardless of how her aching body feels, tomorrow she will go out on the mare to help round up the cattle again. Back at her computer she uploads the images, labels each one and attaches them to a brief email to Jessie.
“Thought Emily and Amanda might like to see what the real ‘wild west' looks like.”
Then, for the first time in far too long she realizes, she ends the message with,
“My love to the girls.”

Before pressing the ‘send' key, she takes one last look at the photograph labelled ‘Bringing in the strays.' And once again she is taken by the perfection of the image of Virgil Blue astride the high-stepping black gelding, looking for all the world as if he is one with the animal.

The Chilcotin seeped into his pores. From the moment he returned to his mother's birthplace, and his father's adopted home, he took on the land like a lover, ignoring her unpredictable mood swings and rejections.

His mother's family, what was left of them, her brother and his family in NaNeetza Valley, welcomed him. It was all he could hope for. Acceptance would have to be earned. At first he moved from ranch to ranch learning his father's trade; between jobs he went horse logging with his uncle.

It was from his uncle that he learned the reason his parents had taken his twin brothers and left the Chilcotin to return to the United States before he was born.

“Your father, that man, he don't wan' see his children herded up like cattle and taken away to Indian Residential School,” his uncle told him one night, while he sat staring into a campfire.

His own children hadn't escaped the forced removal from their people and their culture. After their return, one by one, his three sons had scattered to the four winds. One became lost to the mean streets of East Vancouver; one was somewhere in Alberta; and the eldest perished in a hotel fire in Waverley Creek.

The youngest child, a daughter, Marilyn, returned to her family at age twelve. She was there in body, but whenever Virgil visited, she sat in a kitchen corner like an old woman, a mute testament to the Catholic-run school's mandate to ‘kill the Indian in the child.'

“But that Indian, her not dead,” his uncle told him. “Her spirit just sleeping. Hibernating, like the bear.”

Often, whenever he stayed at his uncle's home, just as he had done for his little sister, he made things for his young cousin in an attempt to coax a smile. He hollowed out birch logs to make birdhouses, which he placed in the trees outside her window. He carved tiny wooden animals from deer horns and made her a necklace. He wove a dreamcatcher in a circle of willow and hung it over her bed to catch the good dreams and keep out the nightmares. But still the nightmares came.

Then, one warm summer day, he climbed out of his pickup truck carrying a battered violin case. He sat down on the discarded car seat outside of his uncle's home and opened the case to remove the second-hand instrument he had found in the Swap Shop in town. Placing the violin under his chin, he picked up the bow, and for the first time since the bones had healed, he willed his gnarled fingers to play. Before long the door opened, and his cousin, her hair tangled and matted, her feet bare, stepped outside and stood before him. When the song was finished, he lowered the bow and looked up to meet her dark eyes.

Placing her hand on his cheek, she said, “You make my heart come glad.” From that day on, his young cousin and his uncle's family became the touchstone for him as he reclaimed his mother's heritage.

As ancestral memories of these vast mountains and valleys, forests and plateaus, lakes and rivers awakened in his blood, the self-pity and anger that he had embraced that snowy night on a faraway campus slowly seeped away.

He took to cowboy life as if born to it, the solitude suiting him just fine. Finding work was easy in those days. Every spread could use an extra ranch hand, especially one with so few needs, a warm place to hole up, three squares, enough wages to cover tobacco, a beer now and then, gas for his pickup truck, and a good book to replace the last one. Fortunately there were no shortages of dog-eared paperbacks in the bunkhouses.

He had long ago lost track of the Western novel in which he had found his adopted name. But he never forgot the feeling of familiarity when he first came across it, the feeling that this name belonged to him. In that very moment he replaced his birth name—the slave name of a dead president—with Virgil Blue. Now he cannot remember being anyone else.

Five years after arriving in the Chilcotin he became lead hand on the Champion Ranch, and because that job came with a cabin of his own he stayed on. He might be there still if it hadn't turned into a dude ranch. He moved on to the Spring Bottom Ranch and has been there ever since. He's seen two owners come and go, and wonders if he can stay with the latest.

For many years he hoped that his mother, too, would return to her homeland. But his sister Melody had been born in a world too far removed. Their mother could not take her daughter away from the only life she knew, from her school, her friends. His sister finished high school, university and then married. And still his mother never came. When she became a grandmother, he knew that she never would. And now this letter from his sister reminding him of a long ago promise. But it's too late.

Persistent stars still sprinkle the early morning sky as Julie pulls on the silk-thin Merino wool leggings. She has learned her lesson about riding in blue jeans. The New Zealand long underwear will keep her warm today, as well as buffering her from the skin-chafing denim seams rubbing against the saddle.

Downstairs, the cold rolls in on clouds of crystallized vapour, as she opens the mudroom door to let the dog out.

In the kitchen, Ian glances from the open fridge door when she comes into the room. His eyes travel up and down her body, taking in her outfit. “Good morning,” he says, then returns to studying the inside of the fridge. “Going hiking?”

“Uh, no.” She walks over to the stove and feels the coffee pot. “I thought I'd help Virgil with the cows. Would you like an omelette?”

“No, I'm good, thanks.” He closes the fridge door, and leans against the counter. “Virgil's done though,” he says, concentrating on peeling the orange in his hand.

Julie feels a quickening of her pulse. “Done?”

“He's finished the roundup. Except for a few stragglers,” he says, glancing up to meet her eyes, “which, he says either will or won't find their way back; the cattle are all in.”

Catching the telltale tic at the corners of Ian's mouth, the thought crosses Julie's mind that in some strange way he is relishing this particular piece of news. Then as quickly as the nervous twitch appears, it is gone.

“Why don't you come to town with me today?” he says, popping an orange section into his mouth. “Maybe we could get a motel for the night, catch a movie.”

Doesn't he realize what day tomorrow is?
She studies his face, looking for any sign, one way or the other, but sees nothing there. Nothing to indicate that he is aware. How can he not be? Or perhaps he is, and like the rest of the year, this is his way of handling it. Ignoring it. How she wishes she could.

Still, if she is being entirely honest with herself, she has to admit she had intended to as well; going out to round up cattle again today and tomorrow was to be her escape.

But go in to town? “No,” she says, knowing he will not protest. He won't mention, neither of them will mention, nor bring up the fact that tomorrow is the anniversary of the day that is always there on the edge of their lives. She has no idea if, like herself, Ian tortures himself with all the ‘should haves,' and ‘could haves,' of Darla's last day. She only knows they are unable to share their grief, here, or in town. She retreats to the den with a cup of coffee, closing the door behind her.