Medicine Walk (27 page)

After a time he reached out a hand and traced his father’s face with his fingertips, like memorizing it with his skin. He followed the scarp of bone over the eyes and onto the broad plain of his forehead and stopped at the bramble of hair. Then he took two fingers of the other hand and traced his own face at the same time. With his eyes closed he could feel the plummet from the brow to the nose and the long slide
to the dip down to the mouth, full and plump and broad. Then the hollow at the top of the chin. He followed the squared nub of chin to the cascade of skin of the throat, to the poke of Adam’s apple and into the basin of the clavicle. “Shh. Hush,” he said for no reason he could think of and gently closed his father’s eyes.

He put a hand against his father’s chest and held it there a long time and only when he felt the air change and the shadow ease in the first pale aquamarine of morning did he raise it and let it settle against his own chest. Then he stood looking down at his father. Quiet. He took two fingers and knelt and laid them against his father’s lips again.

“Shh,” he said again. “Hush.” Like a benediction.

IT TOOK HIM ALL MORNING
to dig the grave. The ground near the precipice was stony and hard. He poked around with the edge of the pick and found a spot with give and started to hollow it out. There was a layer of dry, crumbly soil about ten inches deep and once he got to the bottom of that he hit the sand and rocks. He had to root about and find the edges of the stones in order to dig around them, to get a grip so he could lift them out, and some were as big as loaves of bread. He thought of his father fencing ten acres in his days at the farm when he came to know his mother. This was less digging than it was leveraging out a hole. He got to about five feet
and struck a bed of rock. For a while he tried to find the end of it with the folding shovel but it was huge and he gave up and sat at the edge of his dig and looked out over the valley. The grave was dug within six feet of the edge and the view to the east was astounding in the clear autumn light. He drank from the canteen and sloshed a handful of water over his face. He didn’t want the varmints or wolves or bears to get at his father’s remains. He spent hours trundling rocks and stones from among the trees to the gravesite. There was a moss-covered rock shaped like a football that lay in the shadow a few hundred yards away and he took the rope and the horse and managed to haul it over. It would sit perfectly atop the stones if he could get it up there.

When he had enough stones assembled he ran water over his hands to clean them and then walked over to where his father lay under the lean-to. He bent down and looked closely at him.

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” he shouted. He cried then, feeling the raw edges of a new hurt deep within him.

He took the coat that covered his father and laid it beside the lean-to. Then he squatted and pushed his hands under and pulled him toward himself and lifted him, cradling him as he stood with the insignificant weight of him in his arms. He walked slowly across the clearing to the grave and when he got there he set his father down and stood looking at the hole.

It seemed a poor end and he took the hatchet and stalked off into the trees for an armload of boughs and moss and he lined the bottom of the hole with them. Then he pulled the makings from his back pocket and opened the bag and sprinkled a pinch of tobacco on the bed of boughs. He wasn’t much for prayer and it was the only ritual that he knew. It was an act of honouring. He looked up at the sky and followed the line of
horizon along the saw edge of mountain and thought about what he might say. All he found was a quiet place inside him like the silence his father lay in and he let himself have that. Then he lifted him and lowered him into the hole feet first and clambered in with him. The space was small but he managed to fold the body and seat it and arrange the arms and hands across the chest. He set his father’s head against his kneecaps. When he was satisfied he climbed out of the hole and stood looking down at the shape of his father in the grave. There was a small breeze now blowing off the land and across the chasm and the kid gazed out and away across the valley.

He worked fast and when the last few shovels of dirt obscured his father from view he felt empty. He piled as much as he could on top of him and then began to arrange the stones into a mound. There was anguish in him now that he had never felt before, an aching down the middle of his throat, and he let himself weep. He cursed at the world, at his own sorry history, and at himself for caring. Then he took hold of the large rock he’d hauled over and he squatted around it and pushed upward with his legs, screaming as he lifted it. He held it momentarily in his arms, grimacing, letting himself feel the hard burden of the rock and the pull of the muscles in his face and the long tendons in his neck and arms. Then he set it down on top of the mound of stones.

When he stood up he felt weightless. The sear of sorrow gone now and replaced with the clear wash of air in his lungs. He stepped to the lip of the ridge and stood there in front of that incredible space.

“War’s over, Eldon,” he said finally. “I hope when you get to where you’re goin’ that she’s standing there waitin’ for you.”

It was all the prayer he had in him. And though there were more words to say he couldn’t reach them now and so he stood in the stillness, looking out over the valley a last time. Then he marched to the campsite to clear it and gather what was left into the pack for the journey back.

IT TOOK HIM TWO FULL DAYS
to get back to the farm. When he got there it was mid-morning and he eased the horse out of the line of trees at the edge of the field and sat there looking at the old buildings and the sweep of the acres, gone brown and mouldering in the late fall chill. The cows were in the outside pens. There was a thin curl of smoke from the chimney of the house and he dismounted and walked the mare across the field and into the pen at the back of the barn. He could hear hammering coming from inside. He removed the tack from the horse and hung it on the top rail of the fence and brushed her out. He patted the mare on the rump and she walked off toward the water trough and he slipped quietly through the open back door of the barn.

The other horses were gone, likely sent out into the back pasture. The stalls were empty and he could see the old man working with a pile of new lumber, replacing boards on the partitions and stalls. He stood in the shadows and watched the old man work. His face was rough from not shaving and his clothes were rumpled as if he hadn’t changed them
in days. He was intent on the work and did not notice the kid enter.

The old man hammered a single nail loosely into both ends of the plank. Then he lightly pounded one end to a post and walked to the opposite end, lifted it into place, and hammered the nail in before going back and securing the first end. His movements were familiar, a smooth and effortless rhythm afforded to the task at hand. He was bow-legged and bent some with age but he knew how to work. His face was intent and the kid remembered that look from all the years of farm labour they’d done together. Work was serious business. That’s what he’d taught him. “Ya just get’er done,” was his favourite saying and the kid had accepted it as a motto by the time he was ten. He had the old man to thank for the feeling of bending his back to a chore or a task and the sense of rightness that came from it. Watching him now, the kid saw how much of the steadfast old man was a part of him and he slipped into the tack room and retrieved his tool belt and put it on. When the old man’s back was turned he walked over and hefted the next board in his hands and stood there, holding it at the ready. When the old man turned there was only a momentary hesitation, a surprised flick of the eyes and the hint of a grin at the corners of his mouth. Then he took one end of the board and they walked it into place together and nailed it.

They worked in silence, going through the pile of boards quickly. They hauled the old boards out to stack in the back of the truck and the old man pointed to a five-gallon pail of paint and the kid trundled it into the barn while the old man retrieved brushes from the shed beside the house. The kid stirred the paint until the old man stood beside him again.

“He’s gone,” the kid said without looking up.

“I figured,” the old man said. “I hope it wasn’t too hard for ya.”

“Yeah,” he said.

The kid hauled the pail to the far end of the corridor. They went to work again. They painted opposite sides of the boards and every now and then their eyes would meet and the old man would nod. They painted hard and fast and when they reached the end of the job the kid resealed the pail and carried it to the shed where the old man was washing out the rollers and brushes with a hose.

“You must be near to starved,” the old man said.

“Near enough,” the kid said. “Whattaya got?”

“Got some deer left over that’d make a dang fine sandwich and I done up a soup the other day that needs to be ate.” He handed the hose and a basin to the kid and waited while he washed up and handed him a tattered towel to dry with before going through the ritual himself.

“I got to get the mare squared away,” the kid said.

“I’ll get the food set out then,” the old man said.

The kid stood in the tack room after he’d stabled the horse. Their riding dusters hung side by side. The old man had always preferred a rope hackamore to a bridle and it rested on the same hook and draped atop his duster. The kid went over and took it in his hands. It was coarse and dry. The kid had used a hackamore for years. The old man had taught him to ride bareback first. Said it let him learn the rhythm of a horse better. It had. A hackamore made a rider work more closely with a horse, know it, understand its moods and temperament, and learn to cooperate with it and vice versa. So that when he went to a bit and bridle at twelve the old man had just cocked an eyebrow at him. “Ya want a horse on a
bit in the backcountry,” the kid had said. “Something happens out there like comin’ upon a bear or a cougar a guy wants to know he’s got control. ’Sides, it’s better for the horse to know there’s a boss out there.”

“Makes me wonder who’d be the boss of the bear or the cougar,” the old man had said. The kid wondered at the nature of things that stuck in the mind.

When he got to the house he slipped out of his boots. The old man was rattling pots around in the kitchen and the kid set the cutlery on the table, the heft in his hand reassuring and solid. The old routine felt easy and natural. The old man ladled soup into bowls and carried them to the table while the kid fetched the sandwiches. The plates and bowls were heavy clay pottered by a neighbour long dead, the old man had once told him. While he sipped spoonfuls of the soup, the kid watched the old man eat. He moaned lightly while he chewed. When he bent his head to the bowl he scooped soup quickly, the clink of the spoon against the bowl in counterpoint to his satisfied grunts. The kid set his spoon down. “He told me, ya know.”

The old man gazed at him and pushed his bowl aside. “I always hoped he’d be the one to,” he said.

“You ever see her in me?”

“Near every day.”

“Did it hurt like it hurt him?”

“I could see you move, see ya change, and it was like watchin’ part of her claim its place in the world.”

The kid nodded. “I heard how you got your name,” was all he could think to say.

The old man rubbed at the bald top of his head down to the rim of hair above his ear. “Kinda lost its use same time as the hair left,” he said.

“Did he ever tell ya the whole story? His life. What happened to him. What he done.”

“That’s what he always kept locked away. He had a weight to him like he was luggin’ sacks of grain uphill but he never spoke of it. Not to me leastways.”

“I don’t think he ever told no one.”

They finished their meal in silence and then stood and walked out onto the porch. They sat in the rockers and the kid looked around at the farm. He lit a smoke and he began to tell the old man the story of his journey with his father. The old man listened and did not interrupt and when he was finished the old man asked if he wanted to walk a while.

They walked the perimeter of the yard, past the chicken roost, the tool shed, the tractor shed, and along the line of rail fence to the barn. The kid regarded everything solemnly. “I don’t know as he ever got what he wanted in the end,” the kid said.

“Whattaya think that was?” the old man asked.

They stopped and they both put a foot on the bottom rail of the fence and gazed out across the acres. The kid shook his head. “Don’t know. It’s all jumbled up in there. Maybe I was s’posed to forgive him.”

“Do ya?” the old man asked.

“Don’t know that either. Kinda like a thousand-pound word to me right now.”

“It’s okay if ya figger I oughta been the one to tell ya. It’s okay if ya think that. I wrestled with it for a lotta years, waitin’ on him to break and let ya know the lot of it.”

“You don’t need forgivin’,” the kid said. “You were my father all these years.”

The old man’s eyes shone. “It’s what I hoped to be,” he said.

“There’s a stone in the pack,” the kid said. “It’s from the grave. I brung it for ya.”

“For me? Why’d ya wanna do something like that?”

“I figured you mighta lost something too.”

The old man clamped his jaws together. He nodded. The cattle were moving from the back pasture and they could hear them bawling through the trees. “We’ll keep it on the hearth,” he said. “That way we can share it, talk of it if we need to. Thank you, Frank.”

The kid looked down at his feet. Then he raised his head and looked at the old man and they held the gaze silently.

“I ain’t sure how to feel,” the kid said.

“Sometimes when things get taken away from you it feels like there’s a hole at your centre where you can feel the wind blow through, that’s sure,” the old man said.

“Whattaya do about that?”

“Me, I always went to where the wind blows.” The old man put a hand on the kid’s shoulder and turned him to face him square on. “Don’t know as I ever got an answer but it always felt better bein’ out there.”