The Diviners (48 page)

“For nothing,” Hector says. “Any time.”

Then, simultaneously seeing the grotesque quality of this last statement, they both laugh.

Morag rummages through the Hill Street house. Finally finds the only things of Christie’s which she wants to keep. Four books. Two heavy volumes–
The Poems of Ossian–In the
original Gaelic with a Literal Translation into English and a Dissertation on the Authenticity of the Poems by the Rev. Archibald Clark, Minister of the Parish of Kilmallie, Together with the English Translation by Macpherson, in 2 Vols., 1870
. And two small books.
The60th Canadian Field Artillery Battery Book, 1919.
And
The Clans and Tartans of Scotland.
In this last book she looks up in the Gaelic Glossary the word for black. It says
dubh
,
dhubh
,
dhuibh
,
duibhe
,
dubha
, but omits to say under what circumstances each of these should be used. Morag Dhu. Ambiguity is everywhere.

The morning of Christie Logan’s funeral is fair and cloudless, the sky a light newly washed blue after the recent rains. At the church, there is no music, no oration, simply the bone-bare parts of the order of service, the old words. At the Manawaka cemetery, up on the hill, the wind blows hot and dusty, carrying the sickly over-sweet perfume of peonies but also the clean dry pungency of the tall low-boughed spruces that sentinel the place like dark angels of light. Far below, the shallow amber water of the Wachakwa River flows rattling over the stones.

“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God to take unto himself the soul of our brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground–”

The words are murmured with a kindly awkwardness by the young unknown minister whose brother Christie Logan manifestly was not, although this by no means the minister’s fault. Perhaps he even wonders who Christie was, and perhaps, if Morag could bring herself to express the years, he might even like to know. But it is not possible, not now, not here.

Then the minister and the pallbearers (all unknown, persuaded by Hector to serve) depart. Only Morag and Hector Jonas remain, and one other.

Scotty Grant is not as old as Morag has imagined him. He is in fact a good-looking man in his early sixties, with the red-tanned neck and arms of someone who has spent most of his life as a farmer, battling the land which he has now sold, or, hopefully but not likely, turned over to his sons. He wears a blue open-necked workshirt and unpressed grey trousers. Just as well–kilts in this context would make it into a farce. Maybe it is going to be that, anyway. Would Christie have laughed?

“You sure you want me to do this?” Scotty asks, uncertainly.

Morag glares at him, angry because as yet unable to grieve. But she must not take it out on him.

“Yes. Mr. Grant–please.”

He swings the pipes up, and there is the low mutter of the drones. Then he begins, pacing the hillside as he plays. And Morag sees, with the strength of conviction, that this is Christie’s true burial.

And Piper Gunn, he was a great tall man, with the voice of drums and the heart of a child, and the gall of a thousand, and the strength of conviction.

The piper plays “The Flowers of the Forest,” the long-ago pibroch, the lament for the dead, over Christie Logan’s grave. And only now is Morag released into her mourning.

TEN

T
he willows along the river had been changed by alchemy of autumn from greensilver to greengold. The maples were turning to a million shades of russet, crimson, scarlet, pale red. The air was beginning to have a sharpness about it, the first suggestion of frost. In the evenings, Morag lighted the woodstove. Soon it would have to be the furnace.

She had been working through the day, the words not having to be dredged up out of the caves of the mind, but rushing out in a spate so that her hand could not keep up with them. Odd feeling. Someone else dictating the words. Untrue, of course, but that was how it felt, the characters speaking. Where was the character, and who? Never mind. Not Morag’s concern. Possession or self-hypnosis–it made no difference. Just let it keep on coming.

By dusk, Morag had a cramp in her right hand. Writer’s cramp–joke. But it happened. Must quit. Go outside and walk off the tension.

Walking down to the river across the meadow of unmown grass, Morag realized what it was that was different
about this day. It had been at the back of her mind since early morning, but she had not really seen it until now. There were no swallows. Yesterday the air had been filled with their swiftness. Now there were none. How did they know when to leave and why did they migrate all at once, every one of them? No stragglers, no members of the clan who had an imperfect sense of time and season. Here yesterday, gone today. There might be a reason, but she would just as soon not know.

Back at the house, Morag leafed through several newly arrived books which she had ordered, books on weeds and wildflowers. One told all about the plants hereabouts, which could be used as sustenance, boiled or raw, if ever one were to find oneself lost in the bush. Or, if not actually lost, at least how you could cook certain plants in somewhat fancier fashion at home.

Wait. What about the
Poison
plants? Morag turned to the section hastily. Oh heavenly days. Never attempt wild mushrooms unless you really know what you are doing–this seemed the only policy. The Destroying Angel. Dramatic Old-Testament name. Wonderful name. Terrible mushroom. And how about Water Hemlock? No known antidote. It looked to Morag’s unknowledgeable eyes much like Queen Anne’s Lace. Same family–Wild Parsley. Well, no one would go around eating Queen Anne’s Lace, would they? Nonetheless, suppose you mistook the Deadly Water Hemlock for some innocently edible plant? Symptoms very nasty. “Vomiting, colic, staggering and unconsciousness, and finally frightful convulsions which end in death.” Ever so cheery.

When Pique, Dan and the Smiths came over that evening, Morag was still poring over the books, this time the weed and wildflower one.

“You look engrossed, Ma,” Pique said. “What you got there? Hardcore porn? Hey, a
weed
book?”

“The same,” Morag said. “You know something? According to a book I read not long ago, the Eskimos have twenty-five words for snow and only one for flower, and yet there are zillions of wildflowers that grow up there in the small amount of summer they get. Knowing the different varieties of
snow is essential to survival, but knowing the different varieties of flowers isn’t. With us, knowing the weeds isn’t essential to survival, either, at least not any more and not yet. But there they are all the same. Amazing, isn’t it?”

A-Okay smiled awkwardly, but Maudie responded kindly.

“I think it’s marvellous, to find out all about them, Morag.”

“Oh, she doesn’t,” Pique said, laughing. “I’ll bet she couldn’t identify more than half a dozen. She just likes the names. Isn’t that so, Ma?”

This girl knows me.

“Yeh,” Morag admitted. “I guess so. But listen to some of the names.”

Tom was more interested than the others. He came and looked at the book while Morag read aloud. Dan and Pique got out their guitars and began tuning them. A-Okay sauntered outside to have a look at Morag’s dock-ladder, which he had offered to mend. Maudie got out her eternal and admirable knitting, murmuring that she must finish Alf’s sweater before the cold weather.

“Hey, listen to these, Tom–”

Curly Pondweed

Silver Hairgrass

Old Witch Grass

Prostrate Pigweed

Night-flowering Catchfly

Queen-of-the-Meadow

Spiked Loosestrife

Hounds Tongue

Creeping Charlie

Heal-all or Self-heal

Black Nightshade

Sneezeweed

Pussy-toes or Lady’s Tobacco

Common Mugwort

Rough Daisy Fleabane

Povertyweed

Staggerwort

Devil’s Paintbrush

“Gee,” Tom said. “Wow.”

He and Morag exchanged glances of glee and mutual appreciation. But this pleasant mood was not to last.

“We’ve bought our first horse, Morag,” Dan said.

“Really? What is it?” Not that she would know.

“A palomino gelding. Stands fifteen hands. We got it for two hundred and seventy-five bucks.”

“
You
paid for it,” Pique said, not sounding too happy.

“What you mean is, it nearly cleaned me out,” Dan said, scowling. “Why don’t you say so, then?”

“All right. It nearly cleaned you out.”

Morag, thinking of Pique behind the cash register, felt a surge of anger towards Dan. Must not. Not her concern.

“Well,” she nonetheless found herself saying, “it sounds a fine horse, but not exactly what I’d imagine the
Horse-Breeders’ Gazette
would recommend if you’re going into the horse-breeding business.”

“Oh Ma–shut up, can’t you!” Pique cried furiously.

A-Okay came back into the house, and feeling the tension, responded instantly by becoming tangled up with the rocking chair, which overbalanced, the pointed rockers missing A-Okay’s unspectacled eyes by a quarter-inch.

“Watch it, Dad,” Tom said.

“When I want your advice, I’ll ask for it,” A-Okay said in an unusually ungentle voice.

A-Okay raised his voice to Tom so seldom that it came as a shock. Obviously, all was not milk and honey at the Maison Smith, just now.

Stay out. Tread warily, Morag.

Dan’s dark eyes were obviously battling his own angry responses. Towards Morag, for opening her big mouth, towards A-Okay for interrupting, maybe even towards Pique for defending him when she wasn’t all that pleased by his purchase.

“The brood mares will come later,” he said in a low and dangerously quiet voice which reminded Morag of Jules. “We can do without a studhorse. We can rent the services. But I can give lessons with the palomino. He’s quiet and he’s been shown good manners. He’d be a bit big for kids under eleven or twelve, but okay for those over that.”

“I think you just wanted him to ride yourself,” Pique said.

Dan turned furiously to her.

“If I had my choice, don’t you think I would’ve picked a bigger horse and one with more spirit?”

“I don’t understand that kind of talk,” Pique said. “I don’t know about horses. I never learned.”

“Well, here’s your chance.”

“I’m not interested, thanks.”

Her father’s people, the prairie horselords, once. She never learned. Well, so what? What was so essential about it? Nothing, except that it was the mythical beast. Signifying what? Many would say potency, male ego, but it seemed that a kind of freedom might be a better guess.

Both Maudie and A-Okay were peacemakers at heart, the difference between them being that scenes of expressed
anger made Maudie physically ill, sometimes to the point of having to rush for the bathroom to throw up, and at the same time she professed to believe (and with her intellect, undoubtedly did believe) in the necessity of expressing anger overtly before it became a dangerous canker in the blood, whereas A-Okay believed that anger could be dealt with from the inside, by the angry person or persons, and yet he could bring himself to enter the fray when necessary, bearing, as it were, cold towels.

“As far as I’m concerned, the horse is a-okay,” A-Okay said. “If Dan wants to ride it, Pique, there’s nothing so peculiar about that. But Dan and I are going to be doing something else, too, Morag. It was all Royland’s doing.”

Neat deflection from danger area. Well done, Smith.

“What’s that?” Morag asked.

“Well, I was talking to Royland a few days ago, and he gave me hell. He said if we thought of doing anything more with the farm than raising our own vegetables, which, as he said, any fool can do if they’re prepared to work a bit, and if we were serious about the option to buy, then we’d better smarten up. First, raise some money in the ways we could, me by writing more of those everlasting science articles, which is not my favourite form of entertainment, but not so bad once you get into them, and Dan by working in town this winter. Second thing was, next spring Dan and me to get jobs with some local farmer, for the summer. Dan knows about horses but he doesn’t know fuck-all about farming. Royland says Charlie Greenhouse can’t get help–he’s sixty-five and aims to retire and move into the Landing in a year or so, and would likely take us on.
He’s a mean old bastard
, Royland said,
and you won’t like him, but he’s been farming all his life and he knows what it’s all about
.”

However dour and bad-tempered, and Charlie Greenhouse was certainly that, he could undoubtedly teach them
things they couldn’t learn from books. True, they wouldn’t find him easy to get on with. Charlie hated trees, which he regarded as the natural enemy of man. He also appeared to hate the earth, but at least he knew enough not to fight it in impossible ways. Charlie reminded Morag of various prairie farmers–he wrestled with the land like Jacob wrestling with the Angel of the Lord, until (if ever) it blessed him. A-Okay and Dan would not have Charlie’s outlook. They were different–they had seen Carthage; they had walked the streets of Askelon; they had known something of Babylon, that mighty city which dealt in gold and silver and in the souls of men; they had walked in the lion’s den and had seen visions such as the prophet Daniel had seen while Belshazzar feasted. They came to the land in ignorance, perhaps expecting miracles which would not occur, but at least with caring, seeing it as a gift and not an affliction.

Morag said nothing for a while, afraid to speak in case she should say too much, too soon.

“It’ll be a-okay,” she said finally, not knowing whether it would be or not, but praying.

What of Pique? She was not settled here. Maybe never would be. Committed to Dan, but how much? Having to move on, hit the road? For how long?

Pique picked up her guitar and began to sing. Around her, there was an area of silence, as though all of them, all in this room, here, now, wanted to touch and hold her, and could not, did not dare tamper with her aloneness. She began to sing one of Jules’ songs, the song for Lazarus. Her voice never faltered, although she was crying.

In the morning, groggy from insomnia, Morag went outside to clear her head. The air was distinctly cold. Autumn nearly over. Winter soon to descend. Sitting on the dock, Morag
became aware of an unmistakable sound overhead. Very far up, they flew in their V-formation, the few leaders out front, the flock sounding the deep long-drawn-out resonant raucous cry that no words could ever catch but which no one who ever heard it could ever forget. A sound and a sight with such a splendour in it that the only true response was silence. When these birds left, the winter was about to happen. When they returned, you would know it was spring.