Turtle Valley (9 page)

I had visited Uncle Valentine in the hospital with Mom during his final illness. He was curled into himself, his body as thin and out of proportion with his head as a fetus’s. My mother pulled the blanket back up to my uncle’s chest and we stood for a time at his bedside, listening to him whisper in Swedish. “What’s he saying?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She picked up his round brush from the bedside table and brushed his hair in the way she so often brushed mine, not to preen, but to comfort; to comfort herself as much as me. Valentine’s hair had grown long in his illness; his white locks fell about his shoulders as she brushed them. “People often return to their pasts when they’re dying,” she said. “I imagine he’s in his childhood, talking with his family.”

Valentine had told me stories about his childhood in Lapland, of the Sami in their richly ornamented blue, yellow, and red costumes who herded reindeer through his father’s farm in winter, camping out in tents on the snow-covered fields and buying hay from his father to feed the reindeer. These families travelled on skis and
on pulkas,
sleds pulled behind
harks,
castrated reindeer. “They went like the dickens,” Valentine told me.

As a child I had imagined myself as one of these Sami on a sled, hanging onto the reins of a reindeer as it snorted in the effort to run through snow, its breath clouding the night air under crystal stars and northern lights. I liked the idea that Valentine had returned to these winter fields and was flying over snow with the Sami into an endless, starry night.

“I hate the thought of drifting away slowly like that,” Dad said, “spending months in hospital drugged up because of the pain. I want it to be over fast.”

“I’ll arrange for a hospital bed,” said Val, “and for the nurses to come in to back me up. But I can give you most of the care you need.”

“And if the fire does threaten the place?” I asked.

“Then we’ll wheel Dad out to the truck and get him the hell out of there.”

“You have to work.”

“I’ll take time off.” Val put a hand on Dad’s shoulder. “I’ll need a day to get things set up. Make some room for a hospital bed. But I’ll get you home. All right?”

Dad, still grasping Mom’s hand, lay back into the pillows. “All right.”

AS WE HEADED TO SALMON ARM
after dropping the load off at Val’s place in Canoe, Ezra nodded at the SUV riding our tail. “They should hammer together signs that you can bolt to your truck,” he said. “So you can flash messages at the car behind you, like
Back off asshole!”

I glanced at Jeremy and then at my mother, to see if they had heard, then looked away. Ezra acted like this when he was tired. I knew he shouldn’t be driving now, that we were courting disaster, but I’m ashamed to say I was afraid to take the wheel. There had been a time when I would drive off by myself with no particular destination in mind; I was just out for the pleasure of
the drive. But after Ezra had the stroke it became important to us both that there was some aspect of our lives together where he took the lead. So when he was allowed to drive again, he became the driver. I still did all right on country roads and on side roads in town, but highway driving threw me. The thought of driving in a city like Calgary terrified me.

Ezra stopped for a yellow light at the intersection next to the McDonald’s, and the driver in the SUV honked for him to keep going. “Fucking asshole!” said Ezra. When the light turned green and Ezra started off again, the SUV stormed past over a solid line. Ezra swerved into it, nearly hitting the vehicle. Both my mother and Jeremy cried out.

“Ezra!” I said. “What the hell are you doing?”

Ezra fingered the driver and the man fingered him back. The sticker on the window of the SUV read:
Know Fear.
“He’s the asshole, not me.”

The rage in his face. I took a breath and mentally paged through the responses the counsellor had offered me to deflect his anger in situations such as this, when his judgment was compromised. “How about I take a turn at the wheel?” I asked him, as cheerfully as I could.

“You don’t like city driving.”

“It’s my hometown. I’m sure I can manage.”

“You think I’m a shitty driver?”

“You’re a very skilled driver, but you sometimes drive differently when you’re exhausted. You often help me out. I’d like to help you here.”

“Don’t give me that patronizing therapist shit.”

I turned away, blinking back the sting of tears, to look out the passenger window. A couple walked along the side of the
road, carrying a branch between them from which a jack terrier dangled, its jaws locked around the stick.

Below us, the town followed the curve of this arm of Shuswap Lake. The town of Salmon Arm was named for the fish that were once so abundant that farmers pitchforked them from the lake, and the river that fed into it, to slash into the land for fertilizer. Now the highway cut the city lengthwise, drawing curve-nervous Albertans down to Shuswap Lake and into houseboats. A tourist town. A town I didn’t leave until I was twenty-five, when I was jerked from these comfortable waters like those salmon caught silver and pink in surprise. I both thank and blame Jude for this. When I left the area, I left him.

As we came down the hill near McGuire Lake, our truck began to slow and drift toward the centre lane. Ezra smacked his lips and his right hand circled in his lap. Seizure.

I grabbed the steering wheel. “Put your foot on the brake!” I said. “Your foot on the brake!”

His foot was off the gas, sitting loose against the floor. I couldn’t reach over the console between us to brake the truck myself. “Ezra! Your foot on the brake!”

My mother leaned forward. “What’s happening?”

I honked the horn, keeping it pressed to warn other drivers as we passed through an intersection. Ezra turned to me, his tongue still pushing against the inside of his lip. His eyes were yellowed and glazed and his cheeks drawn. “Your foot!” I cried. “On the brake!”

He kept looking at me, and not the road, but he did brake slowly. I finally steered us to the side of the highway near the Dairy Queen and put the truck in park.

“Daddy, put your foot on the brake!”

“It’s okay. We’re okay now. Daddy had a seizure.”

“A seizure!” Mom said. “Good God! We could have been killed.”

A semi barrelled by, shaking our truck as it passed.

“Are you all right?” I asked Ezra.

He nodded. “Silly,” he said, struggling to find the word
sorry.
He said it again and again, “Silly. Silly.” Caressing my arm. Trying to let me know that he was okay, that everything was okay. As if either of us could believe that now.

“Sorry,” he said at last.

I led him by the hand to the passenger side and buckled him into his seat. Then I got behind the wheel and signalled to get back on the road. I waited too long, unsure now how to merge with the stream of traffic. After a time a hole opened and I pulled quickly into the right lane. Too late I saw that I was nearing an intersection.

“You just scurried through a red light!” Ezra said.

“I know, I know. I didn’t see it!”

When I finally parked in the Safeway lot, I sat a moment staring at my hands on the wheel. They were trembling.

Ezra put his hand on my thigh. “I’m so sorry I got into flames at you when you offered to drive. I should have listened.”

“You’re always sorry. After.”

“When I’m stuck in it, I can’t see. It feels like it’s your fault. I think, if you’d just be hushed. But you keep talking and I can’t keep up, can’t think. I can’t get myself out of it. My head is clay; my words come out all balled up. I feel like I’m in the middle of a lake.” He waved his arms as if swimming, or thrashing.

“Like you’re floundering,” I said.

“Yes. That’s the word. Floundering. I see myself acting
badly, but its not
me.
It’s something else up here.” He tapped his head and for that moment, at least, I understood what it was like for him, to be inside his skull, watching, helpless, as anger drove him.

“I expect this means you won’t be driving for awhile then?” Mom asked him.

“Not until we get the seizures back under control,” I said.

He rubbed his face with both hands. “Each time this happens I feel like my wings are pinholed.”

“Why don’t you stay in the truck and rest while we go into Safeway?” I said to Ezra. “Would you like me to pick up anything for you?”

“I’m okay,” he said. “I’ll go in with you.”

I pulled a package of earplugs from my purse and held them out. “Sweetheart, you just had a seizure. I really think you need to take a break.”

He wouldn’t take the earplugs and I could see him struggling to keep his anger at bay. “I’m not sick like you think.”

I glanced back at Jeremy but he was looking out the window. Beside him my mother fretted with a Kleenex, rolling it over and over between her fingers.

I got out of the truck. “Okay. Fine. Let’s just go.” I slammed the door and stood a moment to allow the palpitations in my chest to pass. The heat and smoke clung to my face, leaving me breathless and panicky, and yet others in this parking lot relaxed into the warmth as if into a hot bath. Ice-cream cones and cheerful faces, even as the mountains above us burned.

I led Jeremy over to the shopping carts, with my mother and Ezra trailing behind, but when I slid a quarter into a Safeway cart it just popped back out. I tried a second time but couldn’t
get the carts apart. A young man in his twenties, wearing a baseball cap and a fluorescent safety vest, pushed a line of carts toward us. He stopped and mumbled something to Ezra as he and my mother approached the store. “Pardon me?” Ezra asked.

“I know you, don’t I?” the boy said.

“I don’t think so,” said Ezra.

“Yes I do.” Saliva foamed at the corner of his mouth. His voice was cracked and his speech was garbled. When he turned I saw a seam of skin in the close-shaved hair at the back of his neck.

“People don’t always understand me,” he said. “I have a brain injury.”

“Huh,” said Ezra. “I had a stroke.”

“How long were you in the hospital?”

“A couple of weeks.”

“I was in a coma for seven months,” the boy said. “Na, na, nana, na. Beat you.” He waved as he pushed the carts toward the store at the far end of the parking lot. “It was nice to meet
me,
” he called out. Too late, I thought of asking him for one of his carts.

“What’s the matter with that guy?” Jeremy asked. “He talks funny.”

“He had a brain injury, sweetie,” I said.

“What’s a injury?”

“His brain was hurt.” I glanced at Ezra. “I’ll explain later.”

Ezra took several steps away from us, and leaned against the entranceway to watch the boy rattle away. He wiped tears out of his eyes. I should have walked over to him, and held him. I should have told him that everything would be all right, that we would find a way through this as we had through everything else. Instead I tried inserting the quarter again, and when it still didn’t work, I read the instructions, which didn’t make
sense. The panic rose up, the feeling of being alone in a strange city and not knowing where I was. A feeling I’d had many times since Ezra’s stroke. Then the skipping, rapid-fire heartbeat. I gave the cart a good, swift shake.

My mother put a hand on my arm. “Oh, honey, what is it?”

I tried jamming the quarter in the cart again, and lowered my voice. “I just don’t know what else to do! How to deal with him.”

“You haven’t been driving much lately, have you?” she asked.

On the sidewalk just ahead of us a woman, beautifully dressed in an indigo jacket and skirt, rifled through the garbage can. A plastic bag filled with pop cans was slung over her arm. A widow, I imagined, in her early sixties, reduced by her husband’s passing to cashing in returnables.

I looked up at her. “Not much, no.”

“For years your father drove to town, and I didn’t. Gus liked driving, and he always got into the truck first, to wait for me, because I was always late getting ready. So when I came out, I just got into the passenger side. I never really thought anything of it. I just assumed that I would drive again. But then he got sick and when I tried to drive I found I couldn’t anymore.”

“I suppose it was the same with Ezra and me. Just habit. I’ve never much liked driving.” I looked over at Ezra and he turned away. He knew as well as I that this wasn’t true. “Why can’t I figure this thing out?”

The woman with the bag of pop cans turned to us and tapped the coin slot on my cart. “You push the key against the quarter,” she said, and showed me. “The key on the next cart pops out, see?”

“Ah,” I said. “Thanks.”

She patted my hand. “I’m forever helping people with these stupid carts. I don’t know why they don’t just get some ordinary
ones and hire somebody like Marshall there to collect them.” She pointed at the brain-injured boy. “God knows there’s lots like him who need the work.”

Marshall waved at her and she waved back. A man driving a Volkswagen Beetle honked at him. So Marshall had become a fixture in the town, a character everyone knew, a mascot.