The Diviners (12 page)

“Hi,” A-Okay said at the door. “Maudie’s got the coffee on. We’ll do it right after, if that’s a-okay with you. Any special time of day for this, Royland?”

“Nope. I don’t usually do it at night, is all.”

“Why not? I mean, is there a–”

A-Okay, ex-science man, groping, wondering about all this procedure.

“Might trip over a tree root,” Royland said.

A-Okay laughed, but self-consciously. Royland’s cracker-barrel humour embarrassed him. He thought it had been pinched from B-grade movies, as perhaps it had. Royland sometimes took pleasure in his Old Man of the River persona, but was no hick in fact. He had begun life on a homestead–that was all Morag really knew. He knew cities; he knew lots of areas. Probably. But never talked of his past. Morag Gunn, inveterate winkler-out of people’s life stories, had never winkled out Royland’s. He knew a hell of a lot more about her than she did about him. He, obviously, preferred it this way. Perhaps she did, too.

“Did you read Alf’s poems, Morag?” Maudie asked, coming out of the kitchen looking like a very fragile wood nymph, her long pale hair all around her, a wood nymph in dirty beige corduroy jeans and tomato-stained blouse, today. Maudie could not weigh more than a hundred pounds, at most, Morag estimated. That such apparent frailty could conceal such muscularity, physical and spiritual, was a marvel.

The poems.

“I read them, yes.”

“And what did you think?”

“Let her get in the door, first, eh, Maudie?” A-Okay said with suppressed irritation, blushing.

“I thought the river ones were good,” Morag said truthfully, “but I thought the land ones were kind of abstract. I thought maybe they might need more work, more specific detail. I know what you were aiming at–at least, I think I do, but they seemed too exclusively philosophical. A little more flesh and blood detail might get them across better. You didn’t seem–well, to
know
enough about the land. Not that
I
know. I don’t know all that much about poetry, either. I really don’t like saying.”

“Yeh. Well. Thanks.” A-Okay’s tall frame seemed sunken in despondency, and he blinked slightly, short-sightedly connecting with a footstool and knocking it over. “I guess I might do some more work on them.”

Maudie looked dubious. His one-woman cheering section. Well, good for her. But all the same.

“As I’ve said before, Morag,” Maudie said, “if Alf messes them around too much, where does that leave the spontaneity? Maybe they’re more for real if he leaves them just as they are.”

“Yeh. Maybe.”

They went outside. Royland had a Y-shaped piece of willow, one hand on each branch of the fork. He held his hands clenched, palms upwards, clutching the greenwood tightly. The tail of the Y was held well up. They watched.

At the back of the house, Royland began walking slowly. Up and down the yard. Like the slow pace of a piper playing a pibroch. Only this was for a reverse purpose. Not the walk over the dead. The opposite.

Nothing happened.

“Does it ever–well, you know–not work, Royland?” A-Okay asked.

“Alf, sh!” Maudie hissed the sounds, as though A-Okay had interrupted during a symphony or a seance.

“Doesn’t fail if the water’s there, or at least not so far,” Royland said. “You don’t have to sh-sh. I don’t need quiet.”

But all the same, none of them talked after that. Tom stood with his hand in his father’s hand. The whiz kid, now subdued.

Morag had once tried divining with the willow wand. Nothing at all had happened. Royland had said she didn’t have the gift. She wasn’t surprised. Her area was elsewhere. He was divining for water. What in hell was she divining for? You couldn’t doubt the value of water.

“Hey–look!” Thomas.

The tip of the willow wand was moving. In Royland’s bony grip, the wood was turning, moving downwards very slowly, very surely. Towards the earth.

Magic, four yards north of the Smiths’ clothesline.

“How about that?” A-Okay said. “Well, I guess we’ll see when the driller comes in, eh?”

Wanting faith, taking it on faith, but not yet convinced. Would the driller strike water?

Tom, encyclopaedic mind suddenly pierced by mysteries, could only stare.

“Will they find water there, Dad?”

A-Okay, naturally, unnaturally, could neither say Yes or No. He grinned, in embarrassment, hoping.

“Morag–” Maudie.

“Yes?”

“What if the driller doesn’t–?”

Maudie, feeling intimations and premonitions of mortality. Morag wanted to put her arms around Tom’s mother. But could not.

“I know.”

Royland marked the spot by sticking the willow bough into it. The driller’s truck clanked into the yard.

“’Lo, Bob.” Royland. Casual.

“’Lo, Royland. This it?”

“Yep. Should be.”

The drilling rig was set up and began chewing the ground. Clay and earth spat out in a steady stream. Maudie shivered and rose from the front steps.

“It’s crazy,” she said, “but I just can’t take this, Morag. I mean, how’ll Royland feel if it doesn’t, you know?”

“I know. Me, too. Let’s go in and make coffee.”

The drill hit water at forty feet.

“Lucky there isn’t so much rock on your place, A-Okay,” Royland said, sucking at his coffee. “Knew one place they had to go down damn near a hundred feet through sheer rock. Had to blast. Cost them enough, I can tell you. Well, you got enough water for a good-size town, here.”

“I just don’t see, though,” A-Okay said, grateful but confused, “how it’s done.”

“I don’t know no more than you,” Royland said. “All I know is, it happens.”

The river had quieted when Royland and Morag went back across. Royland in his old blue-and-grey plaid windbreaker sat hunched over the motor, his eyes half closed.

“You tired, Royland?”

“Not exactly. I just sometimes get kind of keyed-up. You know? And you get this feeling, sometimes, I guess.”

“What kind of feeling?”

“That this time it might not work,” Royland said.

Yeh. That.

“What would you have been like, as a young man, Royland?”

“Maverick,” Royland said. “Maybe I’ll tell you sometime. Or maybe not. Look–carp jumping, see it?”

A golden and fanged crescent, breaking the river’s surface. Then gone.

Maverick?

Night. A piercing noise.

Morag shot from her chair and answered the phone.

“Collect call from Winnipeg.” Operator’s voice. “Will you accept the charges?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Go ahead, please,” said the antiseptic voice.

“Hello. Ma?”

“Pique. Are you okay? I mean, how
are
you?”

“I’m fine.” Voice sounding strong and maybe okay. “You weren’t worried?”

“No. I knew I’d hear from you.”

“Liar.”

They both laughed. Morag, with relief.

“So how are
you
?” Pique asked. “Are you working?”

“I’ve begun, yes,” Morag said, hands shaking as she lit a cigarette, holding the telephone receiver between her chin and shoulder. “I’m okay. I went over to the Smiths’ today. Royland divined their well. Incidentally, Pique, Gord didn’t phone.”

“It’s all right. He’s here now. Not with me this minute. I mean, but here.”

“Thank God.”

“Oh
Mother
. For Christ’s sake. All is now fine because I’ve got a big strong husky dog to fend for me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Pique. You know I don’t mean that.”

“You
do
, though.”

True, as Morag realized upon a moment’s reflection.

“Well, it’s just that you alone, honey–look, I’m sorry. I’ll get used to it. I’m learning, but I’m not learning fast enough. The usual human condition, if I may say so.”

“Philosophical to the last ditch, that’s you,” Pique said cheerily. “Well, Gord’s okay. I mean, he’s a real good person and that. I’m just not all that convinced he’s my actual destiny. We may as well travel together for a while. I don’t guess he knows, really, what I’m looking for.”

Gord, however, was six-feet-two, gentle as a lamb flock except when roused to the protection of Pique. This much, in the opinion of some, was decidedly in his favour.

“I won’t demean myself by asking if you’re eating properly. But
are
you, Pique?”

“Oh sure. No sweat on that scene.” Impatience in her voice, then suppressed excitement. “Say, I went out to your old hometown.”

“You
did
?”

Manawaka. Pique sauntering along Main Street in her jeans, her guitar on her back, a stranger in a place strange to her. What had she seen or found? Who?

“Yeh.” A laugh, not very amused. “I looked it over. I stayed a coupla days. I’ll tell you about it sometime. It was a real gas.”

“I’ll bet. Was there–did you go–”

“I said, I’ll tell you sometime. It wasn’t quite what I expected.”

“I have no trouble in believing that.”

“Yeh, but you don’t
know
what I expected, and you don’t know what I found, do you?”

“Okay, you’ve got me there. What else?”

“I nearly had the guitar hurt,” Pique said. “Luckily, that turned out okay. It was the day I nearly got busted.”

“You did? What for? I mean, what did they
say
it was for?”

Morag had to remind herself once again that her instinctive image of the police was one from the distant past–old Rufus Nolan puffing beer-bellied up Main Street. Mooseheaded but harmless. The local constable. When anything serious occurred in town, the mounties zinged in, summoned from somewhere, taut and sinister in breeks with the bright yellow stripe like a stinging wasp, and jackboots, but not living locally so only a sometime and not-quite-real threat, even to Hill Street.

A silence.

“Pique, what happened? Nobody hurt you? Did anyone–”

And if they had, what could Morag do?

“Cool it, eh?” Pique’s uncool voice. “It was outside of some little nothing-type town just inside Manitoba. I can’t even remember the name. Maybe I blotted it out. Or maybe it actually didn’t
have
a name, you know? I’m walking along hoping for a lift but not actually trying that hard because it’s a nice evening, see, just after dusk and I’m wondering when I’m gonna start hearing those fabulous prairie meadowlarks you always used to tell me about, remember? Listen, this call is costing you a fortune, Ma.”

“Never mind. What
happened
?”

“Well, a car went by, and it was this bunch of, like, you know, kind of middle-aged guys, pretty jowly and obviously the local businessmen or something. So they see me, yes? I take
one look and think
uh-uh
. So you know what they do then?”

“I can’t imagine.”

She could, though, and none of it was human.

“Well, they start pelting empty beer bottles at me. Outa the windows. They’re drunk, I need not add. Some charity supper or something they’ve been to, no doubt. One of the bottles hits the guitar, and the case is only a plastic one as you know, but luckily no real damage, although there’s a mark. The car was creeping along slow, there, and I wasn’t feeling too happy just about then. Well, one of the guys took this bottle and cracked it hard on the door frame of the car. The bottle broke, of course, and then he heaved it at me, meantime yelling all kinds of shit. Well, the glass got me on the arm, and I guess the blood kind of scared them. They took off.”

My world in those days was a residual bad dream, with some goodness and some chance of climbing out. Hers is an accomplished nightmare, with nowhere to go, and the only peace is in the eye of the hurricane. My God. My God.

“Pique–is your arm okay now? What happened then?”

Her arm. What about the other dimension?

“Yeh, it’s okay. Oh, I walked into town. I dunno–just thinking of those guys kind of bugged me. Maybe what they really would’ve liked was to lay me and then slit my throat. I had that feeling. Anyway, I stopped at a house and asked if I could please wash, as I’d had a slight accident, and they called the cops.”

She tries to speak my idiom, to me. She never says Pigs, cognizant of my rural background.

“What for? To report on the men?”

“You’ve got to be joking, Ma. No. To report on me. They took me to the police station. I was let off with a warning.”

“
You
were let off with a warning? What about the–”

“I guess it was just I was walking through their town, by myself, like, and how I got the bleeding arm would’ve been too uncomfortable for them to know, probably. I tried to tell them, naturally, not because I thought it’d do that much good, but I mean, for God’s sake, if you’re a doormat somebody will be bound to walk all over you, right? But they didn’t want to know. So I kept on moving.”

If you want to make yourself into a doormat, Morag girl, I declare unto you that there’s a christly host of them that’ll be only too willing to tread all over you.–Proverbs of C. Logan, circa 1936.

“Pique–honey–”

“Oh shit. Now I’ve gone and told it like a hardluck story. Appealing to your sympathy. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It didn’t come across like that.”

“It
did
, though. Anyway, I’m going on to the coast. I’ll write you. Listen, I’m sorry, this call really is costing you the earth–”

I’m not quite broke yet. It’s only money. Don’t ring off. Not quite yet.

“Yeh, it is,” Morag said. “Well–write when you can, eh? And take care.”

“I will. You too.”
SILENCE
.

The silence boomed resoundingly from wall to wall, The house was filled with it. Only after half an hour did Morag realize that Pique had not mentioned seeing her father, and Morag had not mentioned that he had phoned.

The night river was dark and shining, and the moon traced a wavering path across it. Morag sat cross-legged on the dock, listening to the hoarse prehistoric voices of the bullfrogs. Somewhere far-off, thunder.

Incredibly, unreasonably, a lightening of the heart.

Memorybank Movie: Whose Side Is God On?
Morag stands beside Prin, the back row of the church, hating her own embarrassment but hugging it around her. She is much taller than Prin now, and even though she has finally got Prin a new coat, grey with silverish buttons, at Simlow’s spring sale, Prin still looks like a barrel of lard with legs. She has tried to do Prin’s long grey hair up in a bun (which is in classy circles called a
chignon
, she now knows), but the hairpins are falling out, and Prin doesn’t even realize or try to poke them back in again, so a funny-looking twist of hair is now halfway down her neck. Prin’s hat never stays on at the right angle–it sits there all cockeyed, the navy straw brim drooping over Prin’s forehead, the pink velvet geranium looking as though it may come unhitched at any moment. It is, as well, a hat which Christie found at the Nuisance Grounds and Morag is in agony, wondering if it once belonged to Mrs. Cameron or Mrs. Simon Pearl or somebody who’s here today and will recognize it and laugh and tell everybody. Prin sings loudly, a deep contralto, but is quite frequently off-key, and when she hits a sour note Morag squirms.