The Diviners (3 page)

Mr. and Mrs. Pearl have a broken-down old car, black and rattling, like a hearse for clowns.

They drive off, and Mr. Pearl stops the car on the road just outside the fence and goes back.

“Won't be but a minute.”

Morag does not look back, but she hears the metallic clank of the farm gate being shut. Closed.

 

Now I am crying, for God's sake, and I don't even know how much of that memory really happened and how much of it I embroidered later on. I seem to remember it just like that, and yet, each time I think of it, are there new or different details? I recall it with embellishments which don't seem likely for a five-year-old.

Infantile paralysis–that was what they called polio, then.

The land, house and furniture had to be sold to pay the mortgage, Christie told me years later, but Henry Pearl managed to winkle the piano and a few other things out and over to his place, and quietly sold them when he could, and no one who knew about it in South Wachakwa or Manawaka ever told on him. He put the money into a bank account for me to have at age eighteen. He died of pneumonia about five years later. So I never had the chance to say anything to him about it, when I was old enough.

That's all there was to them, my parents. Christie toted me along once to see their gravestone in the Manawaka cemetery when I was about eight or ten. I didn't want to go, and hardly looked at the stone, and wouldn't place on its grey granite the bunch of peach-coloured gladioli (naturally, half-wilted, one of Christie's salvage operations). Christie scowled but didn't say a word. I was raging because he'd made me go. And now I no longer know whether I was furious at Christie, or at them for having gone away, or whether I was only afraid and didn't know that I was. Now I would like to see that grave, only once, although I know quite well it couldn't tell me anything.

Were they angry at me often, or only sometimes? Did my father feel he'd done well with his life, or that he was a total loss, or did he feel anything? Did my mother feel pleased when she saw him come in from the barn, or did she think to herself–or aloud–that she'd married beneath her? Did she welcome him in bed, or did she make a habit of turning away and muttering she had a headache? Did he think she was the best lay he'd ever had, or did he grind his teeth in hardly suppressed resentment at her coldness? No way of knowing. Why should it matter now, anyway?

They remain shadows. Two sepia shadows on an old snapshot, two barely moving shadows in my head, shadows whose few remaining words and acts I have invented. Perhaps I only want their forgiveness for having forgotten them.

I remember their deaths, but not their lives. Yet they're inside me, flowing unknown in my blood and moving unrecognized in my skull.

 

PART TWO

THE NUISANCE GROUNDS

 

TWO

S
even-thirty
A.M.
and the phone rang. Morag, never an early or easy wakener, surfaced groggily from the submerged caves in which she had been happily floating for some nine hours.

Two rings. Her call. She wondered sourly how many people on her party line would be up and about to listen in. Who on earth could be calling at such an hour?

Pique. Of course. Naturally. It could only be her. Mother, I'm coming home, okay? I've made it up with Gord and he's gonna meet me at McConnell's Landing.

Or no. Not Pique. A welfare officer in Toronto. You the girl's mother? She's unconscious at the moment, under heavy sedation. A bad trip. Naturally,
LSD
–what did you think I meant,
CPR
? She was found wandering–

Morag shot down the stairs, tripping on the piece of loose stair carpet which she always forgot to tack down, losing her balance, grabbing simultaneously for her glasses and the stair railing. She had instinctively clapped on her glasses, she realized, not so much because she needed them to find her way downstairs as because she felt totally inept
without them. Probably she thought she needed them in order to hear.

“Hello?” Her voice anxious, tense.

“Hello? Is that Mrs.–um–Miss Gunn?”

A woman's voice. Drawling a little. The welfare officer.

“Yes. Speaking.”

“Oh, well then. You wouldn't remember me Miss–er–Missus Gunn, but I was in Dragett's Bookshop that day last October when you were there autographing your books, you know, and actually I bought
Stick of Innocence
.”

“
Spear of Innocence
,” Morag interjected irritably. What a rotten title. How had she ever dreamed that one up? But let's at least get it right, lady.
Stick
, ye gods. Freudian error. Same could be said of
Spear
, probably.

“Yes, that's the one,” the voice went on. “Well, I do a lot of writing myself, Miss–uh–Miss Gunn, so I just thought I'll phone you up, like, and I'd be grateful if you would just tell me how you got started. I mean, I know once you're accepted, you don't need to worry. Anything you write
now
, I mean, will automatically get published–”

Oh, sure. Just bash out any old crap and rake in the millions. I get my plots from the telephone directory.

“But, well, I mean, like,” the voice persisted, “did you know some person in the publishing field? How could I get to know someone?”

“I didn't know a soul,” Morag said heavily, trying to force politeness and consideration into her voice. “I just kept sending stories out, that's all. When I wrote a novel, I submitted it. The second publisher took it. I was lucky.”

“Yes. But how did you actually get a
start
? What did you
do
?”

“I worked like hell, if you really want to know. I've told
you. There's no secret. Look, it's awfully early. I'm sorry. I'm afraid I really can't help you.”

“Oh, is it early to you? I always rise at six, so as to work at my writing before I prepare the breakfast for my husband, but I guess a successful writer like you wouldn't have to worry about domestic chores–”

Certainly not. I have a butler, a cook and a houseparlour-maid. Black. From Jamaica. Underpaid. Loyal slaves.

“Look, I'm awfully sorry, but–”

“Oh well, in that case, I shouldn't have troubled you, I'm sure.” Voice filled with rancour.

Slam!

Morag held the receiver in her hand for a moment, looking at it. Then replaced it. Had she been too abrupt? The woman only wanted to find out. Desperate, likely. Wanting the golden key from someone who had had five books published and who frequently wondered how to keep the mini-fortress here going and what would happen to her when she could no longer write. Golden key indeed.

Morag started to kindle a fire in the woodstove, then changed her mind. The day would warm up quickly enough. Mid-June, and, although it was cool at daybreak, by noon it would be hot. Strange to think she had once cooked on that woodstove, when she first moved in here, not then being able to afford an electric stove. She was fond of the old stove now, black and huge as it was, but in the first days it had been a disaster, smoking like a train and the food either raw or scorched.

The river was the colour of liquid bronze this morning, the sun catching it. Could that be right? No. Who had ever seen liquid bronze? Not Morag, certainly. Probably no one could catch the river's colour even with paints, much less words. A daft profession. Wordsmith. Liar, more likely. Weaving fabrications.
Yet, with typical ambiguity, convinced that fiction was more true than fact. Or that fact was in fact fiction.

Royland came to the door, looking old as Jehovah. Wearing his plaid wool bush jacket and heavy denims–a wonder he didn't melt. Greybeard loon. Royland had a beard for the only sensible reason for having one, because he couldn't be bothered shaving. Large and bulky as a polar bear, he filled the doorway.

“Morning, Morag.”

“Hi. Come on in. Want some coffee?”

“I don't mind if I do. I brought you a pickerel. Went out earlier this morning. It's straight from the river.”

Ancient myopic eyes mocking her, albeit gently. He knew she had not yet been able to bring herself to clean a fish. He was working on her, though.

“Oh, thanks, Royland. That's–wonderful.”

Her face, no doubt, looked gloomy as purgatory. He laughed and produced the fish. Cleaned and filleted.

“Heavens, Royland,” Morag said, ashamed, “you shouldn't have given into my squeamishness.”

“Well, the last time I tried you with the whole fish, you threw it back into the river.”

“How did you know?”

“The Smiths' kid told me. Young Tom, he seen you. It just slipped out, kind of. He never meant to tell on you…. Oh, I was about to mention–I'm divining this week.”

“Where?”

“A-Okay Smith's. Want to come over?”

“Yes. Please.”

“Fine. It'll be Friday. I'll pick you up in the boat. Seven. Morning, that is.”

“I'll be ready.”

Royland's faded amber eyes grew clearer and sharper, examining her face.

“Why're you so interested in divining, Morag?”

She hesitated.

“I don't know. I wonder why, myself. I guess with one part of my mind I find it hard to believe in, but with another part I believe in it totally.”

“It works,” Royland said.

“I know. That's the only proof needed. I always think, though, what if one day it doesn't work? And
why
does it work?”

“I don't reckon I really need to understand it,” Royland said. “I just gotta do it.”

Oh Lord. Of course. Which she had known all along, but still perpetually questioned. Why not take it on faith, for herself, as he did? Sometimes she could. But not always.

“You're alone too much,” Royland said, unexpectedly.

“What about you?”

“Oh sure. But I'm getting on in age. And I don't sit around knocking my brains out, like you do.”

“I'm a professional worrier, that's all,” Morag said. “Did you know Pique's gone again?”

“You worry too damn much about that girl, Morag. She's a grown woman.”

“Hell, don't I know it. That's why I worry about her.”

“You used to be her age, once. You made out.”

“In a manner of speaking. Anyway, when I was her age, beer was thought to be a major danger. Beer! Because it might lead to getting pregnant. Good God, Royland. Babes in the woods. Innocents. The tartiest tarts in Manawaka were as Easter lilies. The world seems full of more hazards now. Doom all
around. In various shapes and forms. I used to be very liberated in my attitude towards drugs, incidentally, until Pique got to be about fourteen. Okay, pot. That I can accept. Although nervously. But all the other stuff. I worry. I worry, but can do absolutely sweet bugger-all.”

“You brought her up. You should have more faith.”

“Yeh,” Morag said, lighting her tenth cigarette of the day. “Great example I am.”

“Why don't you quit, then?”

“Too late. For her. Anyway, I began when the disastrous effects of the weed were not yet known, and am now addicted.”

Excuses, excuses.

“Also,” Morag added, “another thing about myself when young was that I got married when only one year older than Pique is now, and Brooke kept me on the straight and narrow for a long time.”

“That must've been fun,” Royland said dryly.

Dirty old man. Shut up. Shut up.

“It wasn't so bad,” Morag replied stiffly.

“Oh-oh. Sorry, lady.”

“Think nothing of it.”

They both laughed, not uncomfortably.

When Royland had gone, Morag wrapped the fish in aluminum foil (good God, why not fresh leaves or something?) and put it in the refrigerator (natural living–it should be an earth cellar or roothouse). Then, willing herself not to do so, she got out the snapshots again, and began looking at the ones taken after she had gone to the Logans', right up through the years.

She put the pictures away, finally, and walked over to the
oval walnut-framed mirror which hung precariously from a nail above the sideboard.

A tall woman, although not bizarrely so. Heavier than once, but not what you would call fat. Tanned, slightly leathery face. Admittedly strong and rather sharp features. Eyebrows which met in the middle and which she had ceased to pluck, thinking what the hell. Dark brown eyes, somewhat concealed (
good
) by heavy-framed glasses. Long, dead-straight hair, once black as tar, now quite evenly grey.

The films were beginning again. Sneakily unfolding inside her head. She could not even be sure of their veracity, nor guess how many times they had been refilmed, a scene deleted here, another added there. But they were on again, a new season of the old films.

I can smell the goddamn prairie dust on Hill Street, outside Christie's palatial mansion.

Hill Street, so named because it was on one part of the town hill which led down into the valley where the Wachakwa River ran, glossy brown, shallow, narrow, more a creek than a river. They said “crick,” there. Down in the valley the scrub oak and spindly pale-leafed poplars grew, alongside the clumps of chokecherry bushes and wolf willow. The grass there was high and thick, undulating greenly like wheat, and interspersed with sweet yellow clover. But on Hill Street there were only one or two sickly Manitoba maples and practically no grass at all. Hill Street was the Scots-English equivalent of The Other Side of the Tracks, the shacks and shanties at the north end of Manawaka, where the Ukrainian section-hands on the
CPR
lived. Hill Street was below the town; it was inhabited by those who had not and never would make good. Remittance men and their draggled families. Drunks. People perpetually on relief. Occasional labourers,
men whose tired women supported the family by going out to clean the big brick houses on top of the hill on the streets shaded by sturdy maples, elms, lombardy poplars. Hill Street–dedicated to flops, washouts and general nogoods, at least in the view of the town's better-off.

Christie Logan's house was halfway up the hill, and looked much the same as the other dwellings there. A square two-storey wooden box, once painted brown but when I knew it, no distinguishable colour, the paint having yielded long ago to the weather, blistering summers and bone-chilling blizzard-howling winters. Front porch floored with splintered unsteady boards. The yard a junk heap, where a few carrots and petunias fought a losing battle against chickweed, lamb's quarters, creeping charlie, dandelions, couchgrass, old car axles, a decrepit black buggy with one wheel missing, pieces of iron and battered saucepans which might come in useful someday but never did, a broken babycarriage and two ruined armchairs with the springs hanging out and the upholstery torn and mildewed.

I didn't see it in that detail at first. I guess I must have seen it as a blur. How did it feel?

 

Memorybank Movie: What Means “In Town”?

Smelly. The house is smelly. It smells like pee or something, but not like a barn. Worse. Morag sits still on the kitchen chair. The two people are looking at her. Let them look. She will not let on. She will not say anything.

“You'll like living In Town, once you're used to it,” the Big Fat Woman says.

In Town? This does not seem like Town. Town is where the stores are, and you go in for ice cream sometimes, like with Mr. and Mrs. Pearl yesterday or when.

The Big Fat Woman sighs. She is so fat–can she be a
person? Can
people
look like that? The Skinny Man looks funny, too. Sort of crooked in his arms or legs, or like that. He has a funny lump in his throat and it wobbles up and down when he talks.

“You'll call me Christie, Morag girl,” he says. “And this here is Prin. You hungry, lass?”

Morag does not let on.

“She'll be all right, Christie,” the Big Fat Woman says. “She gotta get used to us. Leave her be, now.”

“I was only trying, for God's sake, woman.” Sounding mad. “You want to see your room, Morag?” the woman says.

She nods. They mount the stairs, the woman going very slow because fat. The room is hers, this one? A thin bed, a green dresser, a window with a (oh–ripped, shame on them) lace curtain. A little room. You might be safe in a place like that, if it was really yours. If they meant it.

“I want to go to sleep,” Morag says.

And does that. They let her.

And after that, for one entire year, my memories do not exist at all. A blank. Nothing of what happened then remains accessible. Not until I was six.

 

Memorybank Movie: The Law Means School

The long long long long street, and Morag walking, slowly. Her hand, sweaty, in Christie's hand. His hand is like when you feel the bark of a tree, rough rough. Not far now. She wishes it was about another million miles.