The Lemon Tree (13 page)

‘That’s the way life is.’

‘It doesn’t make sense.’

They heard Simon Wounded clump into the cabin and ask Emily where everybody was. Joe hastily swung off the bed and sat a little dizzily on the stool. ‘We’re here, Simon,’ he shouted. ‘Wallace Helena isn’t too well. I’ll be right out.’ He got up.

‘Now, you stay here. I’ll get Emily to bring you some supper.’ He bent down and kissed her. ‘You’ll be better tomorrow.’

‘Somebody’s got to milk the cows.’

‘We’ll manage.’

He left her, closing the door softly after him. The cabin smelled of the bread Emily had taken out of the oven. He said to her, ‘She’ll be all right now. She was crying for her mother.’

Seated in his favourite corner by the fire, Simon Wounded packed his pipe and nodded agreement. Emily gave a heavy sigh. She had been through weeks of fear of the smallpox and day upon day of overwork. She said, ‘I cried when
my
mother died; I thought Wallace Helena never would. She’s never shed a tear that I know of, before this.’

‘She’d everything to see to – including me,’ he snapped. ‘Tell me when supper’s ready.’ He staggered in to Tom and Leila’s old room, where Simon and Wallace Helena had nursed him, and threw himself onto his bed. He thought about the woman on the bed in the next room, and wondered what he had started.

Much later, when Emily was snoring comfortably in her bunk in the corner of the living-room, behind a curtain made of sacking, and Simon had gone over to his
cabin, Wallace Helena got out of bed. She was garbed in the old petticoat she used as a nightgown and, as she picked up her candle and went out of the room, she shivered slightly.

She slipped into Tom’s room and eased herself quietly under the bedclothes beside the sleeping man. She never afterwards slept anywhere else and, once he had regained his strength, he saw that she never regretted it.

The few white women in Edmonton gossiped about misalliances. But Joe knew that he and Wallace Helena were like two halves of the same coin; they belonged completely to each other.

When it seemed that the smallpox had run its course, Joe’s aunt, Theresa Black, who had for years worked in the kitchens of the Fort, came to Joe and Helena’s cabin to take her sister Agnes’s place; they were very glad to welcome her into their devastated home.

The Fort she left slowly spawned a hamlet, and the first small signs of federal government replacing the old Hudson’s Bay Company rule became apparent. A few stores, a hotel, a telegraph office and a postal system of sorts made their appearance. The Roman Catholic priests of St Albert, who had served the early inhabitants of the Fort, were joined by Methodists and Anglicans. Government surveyors arrived to subdivide the Territories into districts. Instead of bartering, the inhabitants were tending to use money. Land ownership had to be registered.

When the Hudson’s Bay Company finally handed over jurisdiction to the government in Ottawa, Wallace Helena claimed the land which she and Joe had continued to farm. Tom had left everything to Leila and Leila to Wallace Helena. Joe was still technically an employee.

Thanks to a first-class lawyer, her claim to have been resident on it since 1862 and her stepfather for many years before that, and that between them they had cleared and developed it, was accepted.

Once she was assured that even though she was a woman, the land had been truly registered in her name, she ordered the lawyer to re-register it in the joint names
of Joe Black and herself, as being a married couple according to the customs of the country. If one of them died, the other automatically inherited the whole.

Wallace Helena met the lawyer when she rode over to St Albert to return some books to the Oblate Fathers. They had brought him in to help them establish the claims of Metis to land along the Sturgeon River, and Joe often laughed at the dislike she had expressed at their having to part with every cent of the cash they had hoarded in her mother’s old trunk, in order to pay the man’s bill. But it was the best bargain they had ever made.

He had been surprised and touched when she told him that she had arranged to share the ownership with him.

Now she had undertaken this tremendously long journey to the place where her Uncle James had lived, and Joe was missing her badly.

Back home after the 200-mile ride to Edmonton, after seeing her onto the train at Calgary, he had slept the clock round, and now he crawled out of bed in a cabin already overly hot. He peered out of the small, glazed window to look at the yard. Emily was already plodding across the well-trodden bareness of it, towards the barn. She was carrying two milk pails.

Good harvesting weather, he thought. Hope it holds.

He shaved himself with a cut-throat razor, in front of a small hanging mirror, much prized by Wallace Helena because it had been her mother’s. The mug of hot water which Aunt Theresa had brought in to him a few minutes earlier was already cool and the home-made soap was not lathering very well. He succeeded in nicking himself with the razor. Cursing softly, he pressed a finger on the bleeding cut, and unexpectedly chuckled; the scar would hardly be noticed amid the pits left on his face by the smallpox. In the sixteen years since he had had the
disease, the dreadful scars had not improved. He remembered clearly the moment when he was better and had wanted to shave, and Wallace Helena reluctantly handed him a mirror, as he sat up in bed. The appalling shock had been no joke, he considered more soberly; and still, people who didn’t know you stared at you as if you might still be a source of contagion. ‘It sure didn’t improve your looks, Joe Black,’ he said.

He was only one of many in the district who carried the marks of the dreaded disease, and all of them would have been thankful for a salve to remove the ugly scars.

He made a face at himself in the mirror. A lot of Indians looked worse than he did. Funny how few men in the Fort had caught it. Wallace Helena and Simon Wounded had nursed him through it, and neither of them had caught it. He remembered how they had tied his arms to his sides so that he could not scratch the horrible pustules on his face.

He leaned forward to peer at his teeth. Though he still had a full set, they were stained by tobacco and coffee. He made another wry face at himself. Then he poured water from a jug into a tin bowl to rinse his face and splash the water up over his grey, tightly curling hair. If there were time, he might go down to the river, later on, for a quick swim. He had a sudden memory of Wallace Helena’s slim, pale body flashing through the water beside him on other occasions, and his spirits fell a little. God, how he missed her lively presence.

As he dried his face, he shouted, ‘Hey, Aunt Theresa, what about some coffee?’

‘Comin’,’ responded a muffled, cracked voice from the direction of the lean-to which still served as a summer kitchen, though Joe had recently added a third bedroom for Emily and Aunt Theresa.

His aunt shuffled slowly into the bedroom, carrying a
coffee mug in one hand and a piece of bread in the other. Her face was as wrinkled as an apple held too long in store, and she grumbled that tomorrow he could come to the kitchen and get his coffee himself; she and young Emily had more things to do than wait on him. She said this to him most mornings.

The corners of his mouth twitched, as she put the mug down on the chest of drawers beside his razor. He knew very well that she would be put out by any alteration in this morning routine, so he didn’t reply. He picked up a wide-toothed comb which he had carved for himself and ran it quickly through his bushy hair, while she retreated to the kitchen. He’d better hurry, he considered. Simon Wounded and the jinglers would be in for breakfast soon.

Later on, that hot summer morning, he rode over to survey the barley crop. As the merciless sun beat down on him, he wished heartily that he could find a couple of reliable labourers to help him. Now that the railway had reached Calgary, some Metis from Manitoba and a few white families had felt it worthwhile to come the two hundred miles further north by wagon to Fort Edmonton to take up land for themselves; there were few who would work for someone else for long. Over the years, he had seen a lot of miners pass through on their way to search for gold. One or two of them would have been good employees, he thought; but the lure of gold was too great, and they passed on west or north, or, in a few cases, preferred to pan for gold in the nearby river, or to mine the coal in the valley.

There were the Indians, of course. Some of them would sometimes work a season with him to oblige a friend, or if they were hungry enough. They were, however, still largely nomadic; they did not take kindly to settling in one place. Further, their numbers had been pitifully depleted by the smallpox. Many of their usual lodges were
overgrown by bush; there was no one left to use them. Other white men’s diseases, like measles and diphtheria, picked off their children. The buffalo herds on which they had depended had been wiped out by over-hunting, leaving them famished and destitute, with all the apathy that hunger brings in its train.

Thank goodness for old Simon Wounded, thought Joe; he, at least, seemed to be happy to stay put. In addition to him, they were currently employing two drifters, who lived with Simon in the bunkhouse. They had come up from the States, single men who had tried mining, whisky-running and being cowhands on a ranch south of Calgary. Wallace Helena was not very satisfied with them and said sarcastically that they were probably wanted by various sheriffs south of the border. She would not have them in the house, and they cooked for themselves; it was obvious that they were not happy sharing the bunkhouse with an Indian and resented Simon’s privileged position in the household. Joe hoped they would last until Wallace Helena returned.

Emily was scared of them and, at first, they teased her. Joe noticed, and told them that if they touched her, he’d see that they were not much use to a woman after it. Because he was bigger and tougher than they were, they sulkily heeded him; they also bore in mind that behind Joe stood a woman like a ruthless witch, noted in the district for her almost superhuman abilities to get her own way and to pay back an insult.

‘She’ll take her time,’ a labourer in the village had told them, ‘but sooner or later, if you cross her, you’ll find yourself run out of the place on some excuse – if you’re not struck dead.’

Though they laughed at the old man, they bore the information in mind.

Wallace Helena had never killed a person in her life.
But, once, she had had such a fearsome row with a Metis, who had tried to settle on a corner of her land, that the man had had a stroke and had subsequently died. The incident had been more frightening to the British inhabitants, in that the row had taken place in fluent French on the main trail through the settlement. Finally, she had poked him in the chest with a long forefinger and had sworn at him in
Arabic
. He had stormed back at her, and then he had suddenly clutched his throat and fallen to the ground.

Burning with rage, Wallace Helena had remounted Peggy and had ridden away, leaving him lying in the dust of the trail.

Though the more educated people understood what had happened, many did not. They knew that Wallace Helena came from some strange Middle Eastern country, and nestled in the back of their minds there remained the idea that she might have mysterious powers on which she could call; such powers could account for Joe’s and her success as mixed farmers.

Joe and Wallace Helena grinned at each other, when the latter rumour reached them. They both knew that their thriving farm was due largely to Joe’s and Simon’s profound knowledge of the country, of its weather, its animals and the customs of the Crees. To help them further, Uncle James had sent them a steady succession of books on animal husbandry and grain farming, particularly in cold climates, like Russia. Tom had loved his land and had broken the sod; Wallace Helena and Joe were devoted to making it blossom, come drought, come bitter winter.

Though Wallace Helena was a proud, fierce and tetchy woman, she had not been so proud that she could not face picking the brains of the Manager of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s own farm, in order to avoid repeating any
mistakes they had made. She also talked to the Oblate Fathers, when they came south from Lac St Anne or St Albert. None of them liked her very much; she did not belong to their flock and she lived in sin with Joe Black. She had the advantage, though, that she spoke fluent, educated French, and in their work of settling the Metis, they were just as interested as she was in good farming; so they exchanged ideas with her like scientists, regardless of their personal feelings, and, with a similar sense of rivalry, watched each other’s experiments.

After breakfast, Joe Black went out into the yard to inspect a sapling he had brought up from Calgary, after seeing Wallace Helena onto the train. He had been told that it was almost impossible to grow apples so far north – the cold spring wind blew the blossoms off before they had set; he had expected that the tree would die during the several days he had taken to ride the two hundred miles home from Calgary, with it tied to the back of a packhorse, beside a couple of new pickaxes. The tree, however, was looking quite healthy; it had retained its leaves, and its branches were stretching upwards. In the hope that rabbits would not be able to get at it, he had fenced it round with a precious piece of chicken wire.

He smiled grimly to himself. Wallace Helena never wanted anything to be planted that could not be either eaten or traded. He had noticed that some of the white women now settling round Edmonton had planted little flowerbeds near their cabins or clapboard houses. He had asked Wallace Helena if she would like him to bring in some wild flower seeds, to start such a garden.

She had looked up at him from her account book, and had asked in a bemused voice, ‘Why?’

‘Well, the white women seem to plant them. Would you like some?’

She had caught his great hand and squeezed it, while
she laughed up at him. ‘I’m not white – any Metis would be happy to tell you that I’m yellow.’ Her lips met in a thin line. ‘I’m Lebanese. Flowers might seed amongst the vegetables – and we’ve got enough weeds already.’

‘O.K.’ He turned to leave her, but she still held his hand firmly. She said suddenly and very wistfully, ‘I wish I could get a lemon tree.’

He had never heard of or seen a lemon, so he asked, ‘What’s that?’

She shrugged her shoulders, and laughed. ‘It’s a fruit tree – the blossoms have a heavenly perfume. We used to have one in my father’s courtyard, at home.’

As Joe digested this, he looked down at her. She rarely mentioned Lebanon and he had tended to forget that she came from anywhere else but Chicago. He wondered where he could possibly obtain such a tree.

She laughed, and pulled his hand playfully. ‘The fruit’s awfully sharp. But its flavour is delicious in drinks – and in cooking.’ She sighed, and then smiled up at him. ‘But it couldn’t live in this harsh climate.’ She tugged his hand again, and ordered, ‘Bend over, so that I can reach you.’

Clumsily, he bent his head towards her, and she kissed him soundly on the lips. He had gone away laughing, wondering for the umpteenth time exactly where Lebanon was. Some time, he must ask the priest who taught school in the village to show him on a map. It was further away than England, Wallace Helena had assured him of that.

After he had gone, Wallace Helena had sat staring at the rough logs of the old cabin’s wall, her face drawn and infinitely sad. She saw, in her mind’s eye, a country of beautiful mountains and rushing rivers, and, tucked along the coast and on the plateaus, orchards, flowering orchards, of oranges, lemons and apricots with a perfume so sweet that it hurt to think about it.