A Man in a Distant Field (15 page)

Declan quickly turned the pages of the
Odyssey
until he found Book XI. He passed the volume to Rose and asked her to read aloud.

Now when we had gone down to the ship and to the sea, first of all we drew the ship unto the fair salt water, and placed the mast and sails in the black ship, and took those sheep and put them therein, and ourselves too climbed on board, sorrowing, and shedding big tears. And in the wake of our dark-prowed ship she sent a favouring
wind that filled the sails, a kindly escort—even Circe of the braided tresses, a dread goddess of human speech. And we set in order all the fear throughout the ship and sat down; and the wind and helmsman guided our barque. And all day long her sails were stretched in her seafaring; and the sun sank and all the ways were darkened.

Rose's reading skills had improved markedly. She read the passage well, only stumbling over the unfamiliar words—Circe, goddess, helmsman, barque. When she finished reading, Declan explained what the words meant.

“What think ye, Rose? Is it as vivid for you as it is for me?”

Rose thought for a moment. “I'm not sure I understand what's happening, but the words are so interesting that it makes me want to know more. When he says, ‘The sun sank and all the ways were darkened,' it makes me think something bad is going to happen.”

“Just so. We cannot imagine entering Hell as though a place, yet here's our man planning to go there. The sheep are for a sacrifice. Odysseus wants to find out whether he can ever get himself home to Ithaka and he goes to the underworld to talk to a fellow called Teiresias, a blind man who knows everything. He is even able to talk to his own mother. Imagine such a thing, Rose—to be able to talk to the dead!”

And then Declan was silent, thinking that he'd had that experience in a dream and maybe Odysseus's trip to the underworld was in the manner of a dream. It was time for Rose to return to help with the evening milking and have her supper, so he sent her along, then took out his Greek text to ponder over the poem in its ancient original language.

He was reading, thinking, pausing now and then to look out on the bay where the tide followed its own journey, in to the shore, then out again, constantly moving, searching, bringing in
gifts of silvered wood and bark to the littoral zone, once a green glass globe that Neil told him was a fishing float from faraway Japan, retreating to take to the deeper waters the bodies of seals, herons with eyes plucked neatly out, a strand of rope, the broken boxes that once held oyster spat, and returning to the poem in its beautiful alphabet. And reading, he arrived at Odysseus's encounter with his mother in Hades, he read of her sorrowful face and he began to weep.

The passage was a message directed to Declan's heart. He had not expected his mother to speak to him from the pages of a Greek poem, she who had never left the southern hills of County Mayo, and yet he had yearned for the dead to make contact, somehow; longed, as the poem had said, to see the dead elsewhere. “It was no Troy, Mother,” he wept, “but a burning house, the house you and Da left for Eilis and me, Tullaglas, on the slope beyond Delphi, the walls of our ancestors a foot deep and hewn from the stony face of the hill. I have no companions and my ship is small, a skiff only, too timid to navigate the waters of Hades' dark streams. Eilis is no longer in the chamber but buried in the ground above where our vegetables grew. I would not allow a priest near to bless it. The stone walls we built and repaired each year to keep the pig from the cabbages, those surround her chamber now.” And putting his books aside, he made his way, by shore so he wouldn't have to cross the Neils' farmyard, to the canoe on its bluff.

The canoe was drying out in the run of fine weather. It smelled less of rot now. Declan climbed in and made himself small against the flaring sides. A green frog sprang from the thwart, jumping clear of the craft. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine the waves beneath him, around him, ahead like white horses racing the wind. And with his eyes closed, he could almost imagine himself a man untouched by sorrow.

Again he slept. The canoe was where the deep dreams came, their imagery summoned from the cedar, traces of pigment, the carved beak of the raven at the prow. Right now he wanted to dream of Eilis and the girls; in the first stages of sleep he urged them into the dream. Wherever they were, in the shadows, on the other side of the streams of the underworld, in the fields of asphodel, they did not come. He slept heavily and woke to Argos whining in the moss beside the canoe.

She was looking out at the bay and then at him. He followed her gaze and saw the big canoe heading towards the
Neils' farm. He didn't know if it was one of those he'd seen earlier that day. There were four people in it, all paddling with easy, rhythmic strokes. They were not speaking. He wondered if they'd notice the canoe he'd dragged to the bluff, perched like a bird on the crest. There was no sign they'd seen him.

He spoke gently to Argos, wondering if she sensed, as he did, that something out of place had happened, now and earlier, as though the planet tipped and history shifted. The birds were still, the tide high and quiet, and although the canoe had disappeared around the curve of the bay, he thought he could still hear the strokes of the paddles as they entered the water,
whisk, whisk, whisk
. He remembered that some of the Indians visited Mrs. Neil upon occasion and he decided to walk back through the Neils' yard in the hope of seeing them.

“Mr. O'Malley, come and meet our visitors!” Mrs. Neil was waving to him from the porch. He walked over, seeing three men and a woman sitting with her, drinking tea. “Lucy and Simon grew up with this as one of their village sites, Mr. O'Malley. In those days, the Indians had many villages spread out all over our area, and they moved to them seasonally. Isn't that right, Lucy?”

Lucy was a very old woman, Declan saw. Her face was as wrinkled as a winter apple, and when she smiled, he could see no teeth in her mouth at all. Her voice was low, and he had to move closer to hear her.

“Kalpalin, the big one, was over near the store. This was Smisalin. We spent time here every year. Calm waters and lots of geese! Pink salmon, too.”

The ancient man with her was her husband, Simon, and the two men that Declan would have called elderly were their sons, Jimmy and Alex. They were heavily built men, the sons, with broad shoulders and hands which made the teacups look like thimbles. They were taking their parents around to Jervis Inlet to visit relatives. They came into Oyster Bay to visit Mrs. Neil and
to bring her cured skins. She explained that she sent down deer-skins from the animals her husband shot and Lucy and her sister tanned them in exchange for part of the finished hides. There was an elaborate way of tanning them by burying them in the ground with a special fungus called Turkey Tails. Mrs. Neil had tried it herself, but the dogs kept digging up the skins and dragging them off to roll on. The two women laughed at the memory. “Better this way,” said Lucy, smiling. “I get some skins and you get them tanned right.”

Declan watched the old people drinking their tea. He thought he must seem rude, not talking at all but watching, yet he could not help himself. These were the people of the canoe, the canoe he had placed on the bluff—perhaps the skeleton was their ancestor—and the canoes he had seen approaching the small island where the ceremony he had witnessed from his skiff was conducted. The things he wanted to know from them had no words, yet. He finished his tea and took his leave, holding out his hand to each of the guests; the men gravely shook it, and Lucy held it between both her hands, saying, “I saw you in the old canoe, eh, and hope you are lucky on your journey.” Before he could reply, Rose was pouring out more tea for the assembled group and they were laughing at the antics of kittens in a basket near the door.

His hands smelled of them. It was not an offensive smell, but it was odd, earthy. Dried fish and some bitter plant and the wood of paddles cured in the salt of perspiration and the sea. He held his hands down to Argos and she sniffed them for a moment before licking rapidly.

“Argos, I'm afraid ye have the breeding in ye to do terrible things, hearing of yer mother and the deerskins. We will have to watch you so.”

Mrs. Neil had sent her older boy, David, to the cabin. He stood by the door in his rubber boots, uncertain of himself, a forelock of sunbleached hair falling across his brow.

“Please, sir, my mum needs some help. My father has gone on a job and my brother needs to see the doctor. Could she use your boat?”

“Of course. I will take her where she needs to go. But now, tell me—is there a doctor in the area?”

David explained that his brother had injured his arm yesterday and overnight it had swollen up and his mother feared it was broken. As luck would have it, this was a day when the mission boat would be at the village dock and there would be a doctor available.

“You run on to yer mother, lad, and tell her I'm just going to row around to where ye keep yer own boat.”

Declan quickly damped down his fire and told Argos to stay put. He took his oars to his skiff and eased the craft out into the bay. It was a short row to the Neil farm where Mrs. Neil waited on the planked dock with her son cradling his arm like an injured animal.

He helped them into the boat as the other Neil children watched silently from the porch of their home, the oldest girl, Martha, holding the youngest boy, Jack, to her side as though to keep him from a similar harm.

“Tom is in some pain, I think, but he is very brave. I am grateful to know that a doctor is available at the Landing today as we so easily could have had no one to see him. I have set a lamb's leg in the past when the silly thing got too close to a skittish horse, but I did not want to use my limited skills on my own son.”

Declan did not ask how the arm had been broken in the first place. Mrs. Neil was talking quickly, out of nervousness, he thought, and he remembered the silent children watching them leave. Tom's face was pale, his cheek bruised, and Declan also remembered the dark blotches on Rose's arms. He talked gently to the boy about fishing and canoes.

The mission boat
Columbia
was tied to the dock at the Landing, a busy hum of comings and goings on the plank leading to its deck. Declan tied up near it and helped Mrs. Neil and Tom out of the skiff; Tom was still cradling his arm and wincing as he tried to steady himself while the dock swayed a little in the wash of boats entering the little harbour and departing again. Mrs. Neil went ahead to make certain Tom could be seen by the doctor. Declan took the boy up in his arms and walked briskly to the boat where Tom's mother was speaking to a kind-faced man.

“Ah, here is Tom,” the man said, “and come right on board. We will have a look at your arm, young man, and see what can be done.”

There was a surgery with an examining table in it and, as indicated, Declan sat Tom upon it. Putting a hand on the boy's good shoulder, he told them he would just go to the store for a few provisions and collect them when he returned.

As they were rowing back later, Tom fell asleep against his mother's shoulder. His arm had been set and splinted, a sling of clean cotton supporting it. He was young, and his mother had been told it was clean break; it would no doubt heal quickly and well. Mrs. Neil's eyes forbade Declan to bring up the subject of how the arm had been injured and how the boy's cheek had received its angry bruise. He had already deduced that her husband was a man with a quick temper and brutish behaviour, as evidenced by the story of the skeleton and his daughters. But he was also hard-working, taking the supporting of his family seriously. For instance, he had taken himself off in his boat to make three days' wages in a gyppo logging camp on Nelson Island. He had rowed as his Easthope was not functioning properly and he was waiting for a part, a piston-connecting rod, to arrive. Nothing would keep the man from meeting his obligations to his home and family—or what he perceived as his obligations, thought Declan, remembering Rose's absence from the boat as the children were taken to school and she was left at home to help with laundry and canning.

Mrs. Neil talked instead of the mission boat and how it brought medical care to these small communities, particularly the logging camps of the remote inlets, where previously a man would have to be taken great distances when injured on the job. Many of them had died. Many still did, but there was hope for others. There was also hope offered in the form of religious service, which took people's minds off their difficult lives for a time.

“Reverend Greene is a wonderful man. He'll bring out a portable organ, called ‘Little Jimmy,' and ask for a table to use as the altar, and that will be the chapel, right on the beach. He'll
baptize babies and marry couples; he'll bury anyone who needs a proper burial, too. He has said that the doctor will save our bodies and he will save our souls, those of us whose souls need saving. He's rescued many a fellow from the drink, I have heard tell.” She brushed the hair of her slumbering boy with her worn hand and hummed a little of a hymn to soothe his sleep.