Bone Coulee (14 page)

My old blouses,” she says, “and my late husband’s pants and shirts.”

“What is the pattern called?” Angela asks.

Esther’s lips twitch for a moment. “I shouldn’t say. It’s really quite silly when you think of it.” She holds it by the corner, gingerly in one hand, and gingerly with her other hand strokes it with her fingers, then folds the quilt to place it back on her chair.

“Indian Hatchet,” she says. “Isn’t that silly?”

Angela picks it up and laughs. “I don’t see any hatchets.”

“Neither do I,” Esther says. “I don’t know why it’s called that.”

“Angela has a star-blanket quilt from her graduation,” Roseanna says.

“Bring it with you, Angela. When you come to the hall on Friday. We can set it up for display.”

She pours tea from a Saskatchewan lily fine-china teapot into Saskatchewan Lily fine-china cups. When she takes the lid off a cookie jar, the dog yips and leaps from Roseanna’s lap, only to get tangled in her oxygen lines.

“Oh, Bridget,” Esther says as she untangles the dog. “You naughty girl.” She cradles the dog in her arms, then sets her down on her mat by her dish and gives her a cookie.

“You’ll bring some drawings to the fair?” Esther asks Angela.

“I think, a couple.”

“We start judging at eight o’clock.”

They finish with the tea, and then Esther calls on Angela to help with her quilt.

“And you can just sit and watch us, Mrs. Wilkie. That we don’t do anything wrong.”

“Babysit the dog,” Roseanna says, as by this time Bridget has jumped back on her lap.

“This design is different,” Esther says, “and how it’s made.” She tells how normally she would have sewn patches into squares, and then sewn the squares together to make a cover. For this quilt, she has sewn forty-eight patches into a large ring, and she has many rings. She then stitched all the rings, like Olympic rings, onto a cream-coloured cotton cover. Angela rubs the fabric with her fingers to feel its warm, satin touch.

“Sea Island cotton,” Esther says. “I’ve had it awhile. From Mikado Silk in Saskatoon. Mostly nowadays people use a cotton/polyester. But nothing compares to Sea Island cotton.”

Esther has two pieces of cardboard for stencils: a circle the size of a dollar, and a concave square that’s a little larger. She has already stitched on the rings, and she has stitched all the patterns inside the circles, except for the last one where she has to trace both stencils in its centre.

“The frame’s old,” Angela says. “Old wood.”

“My grandparents,” Esther says. “They had it when they came from Ontario. They even brought a piano.”

“Your quilts are beautiful. What’s this one called?”

“Wedding Ring,” Esther says.

“Not Indian Hatchet,” Roseanna says.

•
Chapter 14
•

A
ngela’s at the hall Friday morning judging
exhibits and she’s at it all day, writing on tags with felt markers: first, second or third prize. Pinning on ribbons. Darlene’s there, assisting a man and lady from the provincial association. They judge the bread and pastries, garden and farm produce, from pumpkins to red lentils. Esther judges the quilts and knitted sweaters. Esther has thanked Angela three or four times, saying how important it is to get the young people involved.

“Mrs. Rawling showed us her quilting frame,” Angela tells Darlene. “It’s a real antique. From Boston, before the American Revolution.”

“A relic like me,” Esther says. “But it’s time for tea and cinnamon buns.”

“You should have these entered,” Darlene says.

“They’re not mine. Jen sent them. She’d be here this morning, but she’s trying to get rid of a cold. Jen and I are riding on the Buffalo Hollow Homemakers float, and she’d never want to miss that. Better we eat these buns before the people from the Association get back from the café.”

“There are plenty,” Darlene says.

“Isn’t it just wonderful to have Angela here?” Esther says. “We need youth. To carry on the heritage. I hear that you are doing something about saving the old pool hall, Darlene.”

“Yes, for a boutique.”

“Will there be enough business?”

“Rural Development thinks so. There’s a grant. Angela’s come at exactly the right time. We could sell her work in the boutique: baskets, dream catchers…”

“You think so?” Angela asks.

“And it won’t cost you a cent. We could even hold your classes in the boutique. All I need is your signature on a grant application.”

“My signature?”

“The REDA grant. With your signature, it’s as good as a guarantee that we’ll get it. Don’t you think Angela and I would make a great team, Esther?”

“I’m sure,” Esther says, and she takes a sip of tea.

Angela wakes to the sound of a siren.
At first she thinks there must be a fire somewhere. She hurries out of bed to join her mother, who’s already at the front room window. It’s a fire truck. Sid Rigley drives, holding a megaphone out the side window.

“Get out of bed, Esther! Pancake breakfast in the Lion’s Den beer gardens.”

“He wakes up the town?” Roseanna says.

The siren sounds a second time.

“How about you people?” Sid’s voice blares from the megaphone. “Pancake breakfast! Sausage! Eggs! Hash browns! We’ve even got Kwok Ming at the grill.”

“Should we go?” Angela asks.

“I had my bannock and jam,” says Roseanna.

“I’ll leave you then. I promised Mrs. Rawling I would go to the hall to help with the exhibits.”

“The campsite pictures. Make sure you take them, even if you didn’t draw Thomas’s death.”

“I took them yesterday.” She had thought about taking her star blanket, but then decided not to; she didn’t want it to look as if it was in a competition. With Sid Rigley’s megaphone still blaring up and down the streets of Duncan, Angela walks to the village hall. Esther and Darlene are the only ones there, but moments later Jane arrives. She tells them that in the afternoon they’ll be filming the cairn dedication, but this morning she wants to see the exhibits. It’s then that she notices Esther’s quilt.

“What is it?” Esther asks.

“This quilt. I had one just like it.” She strokes the fabric, then picks it up and holds it to her cheek. “Quilts go back a long way in my family. I don’t know how far back. I’ve inherited the Smythe family’s quilting frame. I had the Wedding Ring quilt that my great-grandmother made, until the mice got into the cottage last winter. I suppose you wouldn’t sell this one?”

“It’s for my son,” Esther says. “You’ll just have to get busy and make yourself one. That would please great-grandmother.”

“If I knew how. But I’m more of a historian of quilting. When I inherited the Wedding Ring, I researched the history of the pattern, and that got me onto others. Quilt patterns are my hobby.”

“Before you leave,” Esther says, “we’ll have to have a good chinwag about quilts.”

Jane walks along the rows of tables, stopping now and then to test the weight of a beet, a turnip, a pumpkin; to smell a bouquet of asters. She stops to examine the paintings and drawings.

“Can I see what you have?” she asks Angela.

“Two,” Angela says.

“Your elevator is very human,” Jane says. “And very vulnerable.
It knows that it is doomed. You put a lot of passion into your work, Angela.”

“I try.”

“And it seems to breathe with life….”

“Life and death,” Angela says.

Jane studies the second picture for a long time without saying anything. Finally, she sets it down, and seemingly without realizing, lays the elevator picture on top of it.

“Your tents have eyes,” she says.

“Yoo hoo!” Esther says. “I’m going to leave you ladies now. I have to iron my pioneer dress for the parade. Watch for us, Jane. The Buffalo Hollow Homemakers’ float. You’ll never guess what our theme is for this year.”

The floats congregate in the schoolyard, some of them
passing Angela and her mother’s house on their way. The parade has been assembling for more than an hour: trucks, cars, tractors…,
horses pulling floats. Children ride bicycles, tricycles and battery-driven cars and trucks. A fire engine from Bad Hills drives by; and a New Holland, and a John Deere combine, each as wide as the street. Sid Rigley is back on Duncan’s yellow fire truck, his voice blaring,
“Okay. Take your horses where the others are, over by the flagpole. We’re almost ready to start.”

Angela has invited Darlene and Jane to watch the parade from her front yard. Roseanna is outside with them, seated on her walker. Others are seated in lawn chairs up and down the sidewalk and across the street.

“Okay,” Sid’s voice booms. “We’re ready to go! And just a reminder. Two o’clock at Bone Coulee! The Amati Strings!”

Two marching red-coated Mounties lead the parade. The clowns follow behind. One of the clowns carries a plastic trumpet. Another, a tuba. A third, a kettle drum. Two other clowns wave ballooned hands. A police car behind the clowns is all siren sounds and red and blue flashing lights. The community band rides on a float. Nick Belak marches with two other men from the Bad Hills chapter of the Knights of Columbus. They wear black hats with brims up on the sides, tails of white fur, and black suits with red-lined capes. Each knight holds a sword upright.

John Popoff drives the Green Car plastered with NDP signs. The horses appear. Four teams of black Percherons, their gaits majestic, their harnesses adorned with silver bells and their hames topped with red plumes, pull wagons. One horse farts and lets go with its droppings
plop, plop, plop
on the road. A team of Shetlands pulls a tiny wagon. Twenty or more men, women and children from the Bad Hills Riding Club ride their horses.

“There’s Garth!” Darlene says. He drives his Sport Fury convertible, its hood draped with the Sask Party banner and candidate Eddy Huff waving to the crowd from the back seat.

Angela hears the
putt, putt, putt
of Mac Chorniak’s John Deere D, pulling the float of the Buffalo Hollow Homemakers’ Club. Esther Rawling and Jen Holt sit in rocking chairs. They wear long dresses with bonnets made from the same material.

“Yoo hoo!” Esther shouts, and she waves until Jane waves back.

“It appears you’ve made a hit with Esther,” Darlene says.

“It’s the quilt,” Jane says. “I could tell that it means a lot to her, and she could see that it means a lot to me.”

Esther waves again, until Jen reaches over to pull her sister’s arm down. Jen waves with just a slight bend of her wrist, and then swings her arm to point at the quilts displayed on the float and the sign:

KEEP OUR SOLDIERS WARM OVERSEAS

(Buffalo Hollow Quilters’ Project, 1940/45)

“Sherman’s March,” Jane says, pointing to one of the quilts with its orderly pattern of squares and rectangles. “The design com-memorates General Sherman’s march through Georgia during the American Civil War. The pattern has other names…Monkey
Wrench, Love-Knot, Hole-in-the-Barn-Door, Puss-in-the-Corner….”

“You have done your research,” Darlene says.

“I find it an interesting path in the walk into history.”

“You’ll see another path at Bone Coulee this afternoon,” Darlene says. “Are you coming out?” Darlene asks Angela.

“I don’t know. Should we go to Bone Coulee to see the cairn ceremony, Mother?”

“Too many people,” Roseanna says.

As people drive out from town
and cluster along the top of the coulee above the old Chorniak homestead, Mac watches Darlene direct the dignitaries to each side of the monument. He is not slated to speak; well enough to leave that chore to politicians. He looks around for Angela and her mother, but doesn’t see them. Jane Smythe-Crothers and crew are here. Eddy Huff is here. Pete, Nick and Jeepers stand at the edge of a crowd of people that must be nearing two hundred. He doesn’t notice Garth anywhere, but then Darlene said it didn’t matter if he didn’t show up. She didn’t want it to seem to be a Chorniak affair, but she takes it upon herself to welcome everybody and to explain the order of proceedings for the afternoon. As a courtesy to the main funding body that made the project possible, she calls on John Popoff to represent the provincial government.

“But no election campaigning,” she says.

“Such a thing never entered my mind,” he says as he shakes Darlene’s hand.

“Thank you, Ms. Chairperson, Darlene. Ladies and Gentlemen. The community of Duncan does itself proud every year with the staging of its agricultural fair, and now it can be especially proud with the erection of this milestone. I say milestone, because the word can be used not only for a thing to mark distance in miles, but also to mark distance over time. And I don’t know if any of you can feel it, but for me to stand out here, and to look out over the coulee, to know the major part that the buffalo played over the centuries in the lives of our indigenous people right out here, makes me feel pretty small and insignificant compared to the coulee’s grandeur. Our premier wasn’t able to make it here today, so he asked if I wouldn’t mind filling in for him. On behalf of the government, I, in my humble capacity as one of its long-shot candidates, convey the government’s best wishes and commend your committee for its work done in preserving our province’s heritage.”