Wake The Stone Man (15 page)

chapter twenty

When I woke the next morning I heard chopping behind the house and when I went into the kitchen Sid came through the door with another armload of wood. “You should have had a proper woodpile ready in the fall. At least four cords.”

“That's all that was cut when I moved in. It's enough.”

He didn't say anything, just raised an eyebrow. A subtle gesture that said he knew he was right.

After the funeral he stayed. It was that simple. For weeks after the funeral I fell into a fog. I couldn't cry. I couldn't eat. I slept a lot. Slept and woke and slept and when I was awake I could hear him moving around in my house. I could smell pipe tobacco, and he brewed coffee but never offered me one. Finally I got out of bed and went into the kitchen.

My paintings were gone. The painting on the easel and the ones I had lined up on the windowsill. All gone. The papers from the residential school that I had put in piles on the kitchen table were gone.

“Where's my stuff?” My voice sounded thin and shaky.

“What? You mean those sketches?”

“My paintings.”

“I put them out in the porch. I needed some space.”

“I was working on them.”

He looked at me as if to say he'd done me a favour by moving them.

I looked around to see if anything else had been changed. He had laid his books on the side table beside the chair. His chair. The alpha wolf pissing around the corners of my house.

“I'm hungry,” I said and sat down at the table.

He went into the living room, sat down in the chair and started to read. I got up, opened a can of beans, warmed them on the stove and put out two plates of beans with bread.

When Sid sat down at the table he said, “You could use some extra insulation up in the attic.”

“I'm warm enough.”

“Wasting heat. You need to get some insulation up there and fix these windows.”

I looked at him and thought about this stranger sneaking around my house while I was sleeping. How long had I been in bed? Weeks?

“There was a benefit dance in town. To raise money for Mary and Rita,” he said.

“When?”

“Last week.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

He shrugged.

“For Christ's sake, why didn't you wake me?

“Don't get pissed off with me. You're the one who's been sleeping for weeks.”

He went into the living room and I could hear him rustling through some stuff. He came back into the kitchen. “Don't you even have a goddam hammer in this place?” He was trying to build a small bookcase to go beside the chair.

I got him a hammer and some nails and wood from the barn. For a while the project kept him busy but after about an hour he started cursing and flung the hammer against the wall. I decided it was time to get out of the house and as I left I heard him shout, “If I had any decent tools I could…” I closed the door.

The weather was getting warmer, and every day I strapped on my skis and went deep into the bush. It felt good to be alone. Sid had a way of pushing at me, asking me questions, making me feel stupid.

“So how can you afford this place?” he asked one day.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you're just a kid and you own this house and land. You do own this place, don't you?”

“Yeah. It's mine,” I said.

“So, where'd you get the cash?”

“My parents. They died. They left some money.”

“How much?”

“Why?”

“Just curious. If you've got some cash you should let me help you fix the place up.”

“It doesn't need fixing.”

“Yeah, well I had a look at your roof and…”

“It doesn't need fixing.”

I was getting angry and that just seemed to set him off more. He kicked the porch door shut and I jumped. “Don't be so goddamned cheap,” he said. “This place is falling down around you and you don't even care. And there's nothing to eat here. You need to go into town and buy some proper food.”

I could feel his rage rising. I put on my coat and boots and headed outside again. Seemed like I was spending more time outside my house than in it.

When I went back Sid had papers scattered all over the table. He had made plans for tearing down the old chicken coop and building a shed for his motorcycle. I didn't say anything. Didn't want to start a fight.

The next morning he was dressed early. “I'm going into town.”

I didn't know why he was telling me. I didn't expect him to stay.

“I'll be gone for about a week. I need to sort some stuff out.”

I didn't say anything.

“I need some money for gas, and there's some stuff I need to get.”

“I don't…”

“Look, I know you got cash here. Are you going to get it, or should I?”

I went into my room and got the money from my wallet, which was sitting on the dresser. He must have gone through it when I was sleeping. Knew what was there.

Sid left without speaking and after he was gone I could still feel him in the house. I could still smell him on my sheets, could hear his voice. I wondered how he had gotten into my house, into my bed and into my head. Like a rat skittering in through a crack in the wall.

By night the cold air had washed his scent away and it felt good to be alone again. I heard a lone wolf back in the hills. One solitary sad cry, silence, then a chorus of four or five. Their voices carried far on the night air.

The next morning I went to the porch and brought the canvases into the kitchen and set them up against the wall. There were eight finished paintings — three I was still struggling with. I brought my paints in from the porch and put them on the counter near the woodstove to warm them up. I poured a cup of tea and sat down to look at the paintings.

They weren't bad, but it was as if I could only get so far. I looked up on the wall at the painting Celeste had done. She was so confident when she painted. So sure of herself. I envied that. When she painted it was as if she could already see what she was going for — could see the final image. She picked up the brush and the creative force flowed through her without hesitation. I held back, unsure. It showed in my work. There was a certain competence in line and form, but something was missing that I saw in Celeste's painting. Joy. I looked at the thick brush strokes and vibrant colours of Celeste's
Summer
and I could feel the joy.

I walked to the easel, took down the painting I was working on and put up a fresh canvas. Without thinking, without hesitation, I took the brush and began to paint — angry streaks of red rage and black sorrowful strokes. Grief flowed through my brush.

That week I painted. And waited. Waited for Sid.

The day he arrived I was coming back from stoking the sauna. I was standing about ten feet from the house when his truck pulled into the driveway. I walked slowly forward, my heart pounding so fast I could feel it in my chest.

When he opened the truck door I was about three feet away.

“Give me a hand with this stuff.”

I stood looking at him but said nothing. I didn't move. I put my hand in my pocket and felt the key to the door. Safe.

“I need some help. Grab those boxes.” He was lifting a box from the back of the truck.

“No.” It came out almost a whisper.

“What?” He turned to face me.

“I said no.” Louder, but voice trembling.

“You're not going to help?”

Standing in front of him I was surprised at how short he was. Inside my house he seemed to take up so much space. I tried to speak but no words came out.

“Stop screwing around.” Sid took the box and walked towards the front door.

He held the box with one arm and pulled the latch on the door. It was locked.

“You're kidding!” He threw the box on the ground and tried the door again. He looked up at the roof then back at me. “Come on, for Christ's sake — open it!” He grabbed the handle and tried to force the door.

I looked at him trying to break into my house, my home, and I could feel hairs rising on the back of my neck. Anger. I could feel it rush up into my chest like a fist.

“Get the fuck out of here!” I shouted.

Sid looked at me, shocked. He stood facing me for a few minutes and I wondered what he would do, if he would come at me. Then he picked up the box, walked back to the truck and threw it in the back. He slammed his fist against the truck. “Bitch!” He got into the truck and pulled out of the driveway so fast that he almost got stuck in the snow bank.

I stood watching until the taillights of the truck disappeared and my knees stopped shaking.

***

When I got back inside I sat down at the table, looked out the window, and with absolute certainty knew what I was going to do. I think I'd been moving towards it for years. Maybe Sid was the final kick in the ass, but the real reason for my decision was Celeste.

After the fire I ran away. I was good at running away, like the way I hid in bush after my parents died. It dulled the pain for a bit but in the end it didn't help. I owed Celeste more than that. She taught me so much and I didn't want to let her down, so I decided no more running. That day I sat down and began to fill out the forms for admission to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

I had to prepare a portfolio of sketches, which wasn't a problem as I had been doing sketches all winter, working out some of the technical problems I had with the paintings. The hardest part was writing an essay about why I wanted to go to NSCAD. I'd start the essay, then throw it out because everything I wrote sounded stupid. I tried to think back to when I first wanted to go to art college. I remembered the day in 1968
when Nakina and I walked down First Avenue and I took the photos. Nakina asked me why I was taking them and I got pissed off with her — not because she asked the question but because I didn't have an answer.

Now I understood what I was trying to capture that day. When I looked through the lens everything stopped — and in that suspended moment everything, no matter how small or ordinary, seemed beautiful. Everything seemed important and connected and necessary. Every person mattered. The hands on the clock in the tower mattered. There was beauty in every bit of dirty snow piled up on the curb and beauty in the rubber galoshes the man from the hardware store was wearing. In stopping time I saw the layers that connected everything into a whole.

By May I had everything ready. I packed up the car but wasn't sure if the old girl would start because I hadn't driven it all winter. She didn't let me down, started right away. When I got to Anna's house Toivo answered the door and all he said was, “You're late.”

“Yeah, no shit, a year late.”

Kiiko was in the kitchen. She came out and gave me a hug, squeezed so hard it hurt my ribs, and said, “Make yourself useful and set the table.”

And that was it. That's the thing about people in the north — no bullshit. I set the table and sat down. “I'm applying to go to NSCAD,” I said.

“What's that?” Toivo asked.

“An art school. In Halifax.”

“Halifax?” He said it like it was Timbuktu.

“Yeah. Don't know if I'll get in, but I'm going to apply.”

Kiiko leaned across the table and put her hand on mine and smiled.

“Where's Anna?” I asked

“Writing exams. She'll be home late.”

When Anna got home Toivo took us to the Wayland to celebrate. Nothing had changed and all the old gang was there.

“So, you're finished at Lunkhead?” I asked Anna.

“Almost, just one more exam.”

“What next?”

“University of Manitoba. Going to do a law degree.”

“Winnipeg. Never thought you'd move to the Peg.”

“Never thought you'd move to Halifax.”

“I haven't even sent my application in yet.”

“So you got the bush out of your system?”

I laughed. “Maybe. I might go back some day. Hey, I sent a letter to Nakina.”

“Did she write back?”

“No. The letter came back. She'd moved.”

“Too bad,” Anna said.

“You haven't seen her around, have you?”

“No, haven't seen her since she left high school.”

“Hey, remember the night we came here after high school graduation?”

“Yeah, we got up and belted out that Johnny Cash song. Good times.”

***

I got everything together for the portfolio and once I sent it off to Halifax I headed back out to my house to wait. Driving home along the Silver Falls Road I thought about taking a detour past Cripple Creek Farm, but I couldn't do it. When I was in town I'd tried to find Rita, but she'd moved back to the States with her parents. Mary and Tom had moved north. Everyone scattered after the fire.