The Last Woman (28 page)

On the other hand, most acknowledged that something had to be done. Nearly every family on Pine Island depended partly on hunting and fishing for their food; a good many derived part of their income from trapping. Yet the bush wasn’t just their larder. It was also their pharmacy, their church, their home. “It’s who we are,” Billy told Richard. “Lose that and we might as well call it a day.”

Yet the community remained divided. At least half his fellow band councillors were opposed to a claim, Billy estimated, including the current chief. “Old Dan – you might as well ask him to plant a bomb in the legislature. The man’s tiptoed around trouble his whole life, he’s not about to change now.”

“So become chief yourself,” Richard suggested. They were sitting in front of the fireplace at Inverness.

“It’s occurred to me.”

“Look at Billy Diamond up on James Bay – got elected at twenty-one. There’s younger chiefs everywhere now. You said yourself Dan’s not very popular. People feel they made a mistake. Run against him next election. Make the land claim an issue.”

Ann had just come in from a paddle and, face glowing, thrown herself onto the couch.

“So, you want Billy to run for chief.” Without waiting for a response, she turned to Billy. “I mean, I think you’d make a great chief, but – I’ve heard it’s pretty onerous, that job. I remember when Marvin Maclean was chief. He once told my father that all he did was phone up government
offices. If somebody’s cheque didn’t come in, he’d lose half the day tracking it down.”

“We’re talking about starting a land claim,” Richard said, sorry she was discouraging him. “The thing is,
somebody
has to take the lead. And if not Billy –”

They both looked at Billy. “So you think the gun’s pointed at me?” he said, with the hint of a smile.

“I’d be there too, if you wanted,” Richard said quietly. Billy looked at him. He seemed surprised.

“You two would be good together,” Ann said.

Billy turned his head toward the window, where a late sun was streaking through the pines. Richard suddenly felt exhilarated, as if his life was about to take an important turn. He not only felt that the band could be successful with a claim, he had already sketched out, in his head, a possible legal approach. But everything depended on Billy. And Billy, lost in his own thoughts, had remained silent.

S
lipping from his house, he hurries away from the settlement, anxious to avoid others. He can’t bear the clatter of their words. The small knives of their eyes. Under pines, he lies on his stomach, his cheek turned to the ground, desperate to still the surging restlessness – it is close to panic – that has gripped him since the clear-cut. In the lap of water he senses peace. In the green shadows mantling a boulder, where a single fern quivers in the sun – peace. But he can’t get hold of it. Lying as still as he can, he closes his fist on a stone.

He keeps thinking of Silver Lake, the cabin in the clearing.
I’ll go up tomorrow
. The thought is an instinct, too quick to suppress, and as comforting, momentarily,
as cool water. But it is also a mockery. The cabin might be there, a few trees left around the lake. But
his
Silver is surely gone.

Sometimes he feels that all he has is Ann. Rocking with her in the striped light of their room, he had forgotten for a while. All he needed was what he had – the hunger with which they devoured each other.

From Yvonne’s empty kitchen, he phones Inverness. “I’d really like to see you,” he says.

“I want to see you too.” But he senses reluctance in her voice, a withdrawal.

“When do you think…?”

“Soon, soon. But there’s so much I have to do. Richard and Rowan are coming up tomorrow.”

He visits Martin Clearsky. A spark of triumph in Martin’s mournful eyes, as if Martin were saying,
I knew you would come to it in the end. Because really, you’re no better than the rest of us
. As chief, Billy managed to shut the bootlegger down for a while, but here he is like any Simpson or Mackay, counting out his bills and fretting, dry-mouthed, as Martin disappears behind a shower of clicking beads.

That night, he drinks at his own kitchen table. Before him is the whisky bottle, and a tumbler where a painted fisherman’s rod bends and a big red fish leaps in the foreground. He fills the glass until its tail is under whisky (ha!), raises the glass, drains half of it off, puts down the glass, and sits motionless until he feels moved to drink again. From somewhere on the Island come the shouts of those
who are drinking more openly, or whose drunkenness has reached a deeper pass. A baby is crying. He closes his eyes.
Wah! Wah!
He picks up the glass. The liquid burns down his throat.
Wah!
Will no one tend to it? He goes to a window, and the baby squalls across the darkness. The moon is there, blunted on one side.

Stumbling outside, he makes his way to the lake, drinking straight from the bottle. A figure is making its way along the shore. It falls down with a groan, gets up, disappears, is reborn in another place, staggers on, stops, puts back its head, tilts up its bottle of sloshing moonlight.

“You,” it says when it comes close, reassembling itself from shadow. It sits on the log beside him.

Chilled suddenly, he dares not look.

Wah! Wah!

Legs stretched out: the white rims of running shoes.

A ripple gleams like a snake moving sideways, to collapse along the shore.

So where you been?

He huggers up with his bottle, ignoring the question.

Hey, you.

Here, everywhere! Down in the States.

What you do down there?

His time away – the blink of an eye.

Pruned Christmas trees.

The other is silent.

Worked on a boat. Fed the dolphins!

Silent.

He remembers the intelligent eyes of the dolphins. The ripples laving their grey heads, the smiling of their lipless mouths. The dolphins knew something people did not. He had wanted to go away with them.

And.

Lived in the streets, in Orlando. Sat cross-legged with a can in front of me. Because I had fallen into the black place I used to fall into when I was a boy. You drink because nothing matters and because you drink it matters less. Your face goes numb. Your heart. You might cut your arm or pick a fight, just to get some feeling.

Where?

There!

Where?

There! He slaps his chest.

Where?

There! He slaps his own face. One morning I was sick of it. I walked away and got a job making wooden pallets.

And?

And? And?
Won’t you ever shut up? I lived with a woman, Moira Simms. Had a son with Down’s syndrome. I never saw a woman so tender with a boy, or a boy with so much love in him. But I left. I always left.

Why did you leave?

Restless. Too many thoughts. And – I didn’t love them, the women.

Did you love anybody?

Johnny Simms. A little girl in Atlanta. She used to bring me a book and say, “Story!” Rebecca Jane. I’d stay longer
than I wanted, because of the kids. They’d get attached, and I wouldn’t want to hurt them by leaving. I learned to find out first if a woman had any kids. If she did I wouldn’t go with her.

A ripple collapses.

Loved no one else? Only them you left?

He knows the answer to that one, the feeling of her would come to him sometimes. He finds it pathetic – and a wonder – that in his whole life he has loved, really, only one woman.

What she feel for you?

Not even now does he know.

One running shoe rises and falls, digging into sand.

I was chief here.

Yes?

I started a land claim, tried to get all this back.

Yes?

I staked everything on the claim. I thought because of the fire in me, we would succeed. Such fire I had! I could have slept in the snow!

Why did it fail?

Why don’t you go away! Discovering the bottle in his hand, he tilts it back. Empty. He throws it aside.

Richard Galuta, he – didn’t execute. We agreed on a plan, but he’d go off on his own. He was always convinced he knew best. But the other lawyers were better.

You hired him.

Again he digs his heel in the sand. He can’t get around that one. He had hired Richard. And not fired him.

So why did you launch it?

Why do we do anything! Because you look at your people and you see what’s been done to them. Because one time she said I would make a great chief. Because –

So you did it for her.

Dammit, no!

For the people –

Shut up, why don’t you!

And for the land.

Remembering the clear-cut, he laughs bitterly. Those trees there. He gestures to their dim shapes. Behind them –

Yes?

He clutches his face.

Is that what you wanted then?

What?

Nothing?

He raises his head. The clear-cuts, the land claim, Ann Scott, his life, just so much glitter in the moon’s net.

He stands knee-deep in water. The baby is crying again. The moon is sinking over the islands. He takes another step, bumps his foot, stops, moves forward. The water covers his thighs now. The surface sucks at his fingertips.

W
hen Richard pulls into the Harbour with Rowan, he sees Ann, waiting on a bench along the quay. “There’s Mom!” Rowan cries as they swing into the parking lot. As she crosses the road, she waves to them but goes directly to Rowan as he gets out, fussing over him with an enthusiasm that to Richard seems exaggerated. He has convinced himself that when he first lays eyes on his wife, he will know, in that instant, whether he has anything to fear. But as they walk to the boat, he finds himself as uncertain as ever.

And something else has cropped up: her sudden, unsettling attractiveness. He wants her with a feeling close to hate. And this feeling persists – an almost rancorous desire that increases through the afternoon.

Stealing up behind her in the kitchen, he wraps her in his arms – lodging the sides of his hand under her breasts. “You look ravishing,” he breathes and feels awkward saying it. Laughing – a false note there? – she pauses with her paring knife. “My nose is peeling and my hair is filthy. But thank you. Now let me finish.”

Determined, he kisses her neck and she leans away.

“So later then?”

She falls still. “We’ll have to see,” she says quietly. When she pats his arm, he retreats.

Later, after supper, Ann goes off to her studio and Richard sits down at his worktable on the porch. But his concentration is in tatters. All he wants to do is rush after her. But there are papers to read, arguments to prepare, and just outside the porch screens Rowan keeps drumming on the steps with a stick. Manic, Richard thinks angrily, shoving back his chair.