The Diviners (7 page)

Maudie rose and nudged A-Okay.

“I think we should be getting along,” A-Okay said. “Are you all right, Morag? Is there anything–?”

“I’m all right. Really.”

Alone, Morag sat still for another half-hour before she could bring herself to get out the notebook and begin.

Whatever is happening to Pique is not what I think is happening, whatever that may be. What happened to me wasn’t what anyone else thought was happening, and maybe not even what I thought was happening at the time. A popular misconception is that we can’t change the past–everyone is constantly changing their own past, recalling it, revising it. What really happened? A meaningless question. But one I keep trying to answer, knowing there is no answer.

Memorybank Movie: The Thistle Shamrock Rose
Entwine the Maple Leaf Forever

Morag is twelve, and is she ever tough. She doesn’t walk all hunched up any more, like when she was a little kid. Nosiree, not her. She is tall and she doesn’t care who knows it. Her tits have swollen out already, and she shows them off by walking straight, swinging her shoulders just a little bit. Most of the girls are still as flat as boards. She has started her monthlies, too, and occasionally lets kids like Mavis or Vanessa, who haven’t started, know it by a dropped remark here and there. She is a woman, and a lot of them are just kids.

But she’s a tomboy, too. You gotta be. If it comes to a fight, she doesn’t need to fight like a girl, scratching with her fingernails. She slugs with her closed fist. Boys or girls, it makes no difference. If a boy ever teases her, she goes for him. The best way is to knee them in the balls. They double over, scream, and chicken out. Hardly any boys ever tease her these days.

Nobody much teases Eva Winkler, any more, either, because Morag gives them the bejesus if they do. Eva is her friend, her one true friend. She loves Eva. She looks down on Eva, too, a bit, because Eva is gutless as a cleaned whitefish. It must be awful to be gutless. Gus Winkler still beats his kids, even Eva. He doesn’t even have to be drunk. In fact, he hardly ever drinks and then only beer. He just likes beating his kids, that’s all. You couldn’t imagine Eva, so pale-haired and always saying
Oh sorry I didn’t mean to
even when she’s done nothing, you couldn’t imagine her deserving it. Maybe Gus beats her because she’s gutless, like Mrs. Winkler, like all the kids, there. In some awful spooky way Morag can understand this. If you ask for it, you sure as hell get it. But she sticks up for Eva, because Eva is her friend. She doesn’t stick up for Eva with Gus, though. She never goes over there. She and Christie sit on the front porch and hear it happening. When it does, they never look at each other.

Morag is the best girl pitcher on the ballfield, and also a good shortstop. She can even play ball with the boys, and sometimes does. The girls yell things at her, but Morag doesn’t care a fuck. They can’t hurt her. She’ll hurt them first. And when the boys laugh, she grins openmouth clowny, then pitches a twister, hard and fast.

The teachers hate her. Ha ha. She isn’t a little flower, is why. That will be the day, when she tries to please a living soul.

Conversation Overheard from the Teachers’ Room
All of Them in There Gabbing at Recess

Morag doesn’t let on. If you let on, ever, you’re done for.

“How’d you get on today, Morag?” Christie says. “Let’s see what you’re copying out, there.”

Christie’s brown cracked stained teeth. Like an old teapot. Ha ha. You can see them all when he grins while reading.

“What in hell is this crap?
I wandered lonely as a cloud.
This Wordsworth, now, he was a pansy, girl, or no, maybe a daffodil? Clouds don’t wander lonely, for the good christ’s sake. Any man daft enough to write a line like that, he wanted
his head looked at, if you ask me. Look here, I’ll show you a poem, now, then.”

Two large books she has never seen before, red binding a little bit warped, and really small print.

“In the days long long ago,” Christie says sternly, “he lived, this man, and was the greatest song-maker of them all, and all this was set down years later, pieced together from what old men and old women remembered, see, them living on far crofts hither and yon, and they sang and recited these poems as they had been banded down over the generations. And the English claimed as how these were not the real old songs, but only forgeries, do you see, and you can read about it right here in this part which is called Introduction, but the English were bloody liars then as now. And I’ll read you what he said, then, a bit of it.”

A chariot! the great chariot of war,

Moving over the plain with death!

The shapely swift car of Cuchullin,

True son of Semo of hardy deeds.

Behind it curves downward like a wave,

Or mist enfolding a sharp-peaked hill;

The light of precious stones about it,

Like the sea in wake of boat at night.

Of shining yew is its pole,

Of well-smoothed bone the seat:

It is the dwelling-place of spears,

Of shields, of swords, and heroes.

On the right of the great chariot

Is seen a horse high-mettled, snorting,

High-crested, broad-chested, dark,

High-bounding, strong-bodied son of the Ben,

Springy and sounding his foot;

The spread of his forelock on high

Is like mist on the dwelling of deer.

Shining his coat, and speedy

His pace–Si-fodda his name.

On the other side of the car

Is an arch-necked snorting horse,

Thin-maned, free-striding, deep-hoofed,

Swift-footed, wide nostrilled son of the mountains–

Du-sron-gel the name of the gallant steed.

Full thousand slender thongs

Fasten the chariot on high;

The hard bright bit of the bridle,

In their jaws foam-covered, white,

Shining stones of power

Save aloft with the horses’ manes–

Horses, like mist of mountain-side,

Which onward bear the chief to his fame.

Keener their temper than the deer,

Strong as the eagle their strength.

Their noise is like winter fierce

On Gormal smothered in snow.

In the chariot is seen the chief.

True-brave son of the keen brands,

Cuchullin of blue-spotted shields,

Son of Semo, renowned in song.

Ossian. Christie says
Aw-shun
. And shows her the Gaelic words, but cannot say them.

“It must sound like
something
in the old language, Morag. My father knew a few words of it, and I remember a little bit of it from when I was knee-high to a grasshopper and that must’ve been in Easter Ross before my old man kicked off and my mother came to this country with me, and hired herself out as help in houses in Nova Scotia, there, and kicked the bucket when I was around fifteen or so, and with all of that. I never learned the Gaelic, and it’s a regret to me.”

Together they look at the strange words, unknown now, lost, as it seems, to all men, the words that once told of the great chariot of Cuchullin.

Carbad! carbad garbh a’ chómhraig,

’Gluasas thar cómhnaird le bás;

Carbad suimir, luath Chuchullin,

Sár-mhac Sheuma nan cruaidh chás.

“Gee. Think of that, Christie. Think of that, eh? Read some more in
our
words, eh?”

But Prin waddles over to the table and lays it for supper, and they eat boiled cabbage and boiled spuds and baloney. Christie chews with his mouth open so you can see the mushy slop of pink meat and greeny mush cabbage and gummy potatoes in there. Morag wants to hit him so hard his mouth will pour with blood. She stares at him, but he does not notice. Or if he does, he doesn’t let on.

The Grade Six room is full of maple desks, each with a metal inkwell. Initials of other kids in other years are carved into
the desks, with jackknives or by going over and over with a pencil until the lead eats into the wood. This is the easiest to do, and Morag has put M.G. on hers this way. You always have to look up at the blackboard at the front. Should be called the greyboard, always smudged with chalk. Morag can never see the board properly, and never has been able to, but doesn’t let on. If she let on, they’d move her to the front row and she likes the back row better. No one is behind you there, looking at you.

On the walls at the side and back, great big framed pictures. No colours, just very dark brown or black, shadowy. One is of two people, a man and a woman, dressed in olden days poor clothes, kneeling down.
The Angelus
. Which means a bell is
tolling
, telling them it is time to pray. The other picture is worse–a whole lot of soldiers looking terrible, and a drooping Union Jack, and in the middle a man falling or fainting (dying, actually) with his eyeballs rolling upwards.
The Death of General Wolfe
.

“Good morning, Grade Six.”

“Good morning, Miss McMurtrie.”

“We will now sing ‘O, Canada.’”

Grade Six shuffles to its feet.

O Ca-na-
DA

Our home an’ native lan’

Troo patriot
LUV

In all thy sons’ comman’….

They are also learning it in French. The school board was a mite dubious at first, Miss McMurtrie says, tee hee, but she won them over.

O Ca-na-
DA

Teara da nose ah yoo….

The second line always makes the kids titter. They know it means land of our forefathers, but that isn’t what it seems to mean. Morag sings loudly. She loves singing and has a good and carrying voice. She doesn’t mind standing up any more, at least not when all the other kids are also standing beside their desks. Her dresses aren’t away below her knees now, hell no, because she lops them off with the kitchen scissors herself and sometimes even does a hem, which is boring but doesn’t take so long if you take good big stitches. Now her dresses are shorter than anyone else’s, because she is going to show them, is why. Prin still makes Morag’s dresses out of old stuff, though. Who has the money for new stuff these days, Prin says. (Some have.) Prin isn’t so hot at sleeves, so usually leaves them out, and in the cold weather Morag wears a sweater underneath the dress. She wears running shoes in warm weather and galoshes in winter, with only socks inside, not shoes, so has to keep them on all day, and how could anyone not have stinky feet if they had to do that? Who gives a christly damn anyway? She’s not the worst dressed. Eva is worse–her dresses are still halfway to her ankles, as she is too ascared of what her dad will say if she cuts them off. Also, one of the Tonnerre girls, halfbreed from the valley, is worse dressed; she’s away a lot because of
TB
in one leg but when she
is
at school she looks the worst because her dresses are long-gawky and dirty, and she has a limpwalk.

They are seated again, and it is Spelling.

“Morag!”

Startled, she looks up. The teacher has been talking to her and she hasn’t heard.

“That’s quite enough, class,” Miss McMurtrie says, because of the giggling all around. “Stand up, Morag.”

Draggingly, she stands. Whatever is going to happen, it can only be awful. She straightens her shoulders and holds herself so her tits stick out under her dress.

“Now, Morag, you weren’t listening, were you?”

Silence. She cannot speak. Her throat is full of phlegm or something. She stares boldly at Miss McMurtrie, so the teacher will think she is being silent on purpose.

“Are you tongue-tied, Morag?”

Morag is not here. She is in the Wachakwa valley, and the couchgrass is high around her. There is a clump of scrub oak trees, easy to climb, and all around are thick chokecherry bushes. It is warm and shady in the hideout, and you can hear the bees singing their crazy buzzsongs as they tumble among the pink wild asters and cowslip bells colour of oranges or suns. Cowslips are the best. For bees. More honey in them.

“I
said
,” Miss McMurtrie’s butcherknife voice, “I
said
are you tongue-tied, Morag?”

Morag’s anger. Like shame, burning in her throat.

“You know I’m not.” Loud.

Miss McMurtrie’s face gone reddish, splotched.

“Very well, then, if you’re
not
tongue-tied, would you be so kind as to answer the question I asked you about ten minutes ago? You’re wasting the class’s time, Morag. I suppose I will have to repeat the question. Obviously you were away off in Cloud Cuckoo Land. How do you spell Egypt?”