The Diviners Page 15

  “Thirty-nine. He looks twice that, eh? I was born when he was the same age I am now. Nineteen. One thing is for sure. I’m never gonna get like him. But he’s not always like today. He don’t like me bringing girls home. He gets wild for a woman sometimes. Then he gets drunk and gets into a brawl. I guess he was pretty tough on my mother. She was Métis, too, from up Galloping Mountain way. She thought Manawaka was gonna be the big city, and I guess she thought she was getting a king, there, when she got him. Some king. King Lazarus. Laugh now. No wonder she took off. But Jesus, he can’t help himself sometimes. I’ve seen him get so mad, not at anybody, just at everything, that he’ll hit his fist against the wall, just hit it, there, until the knuckles bleed.”

  “Why? Why?”

  “I dunno. Things get him down, I guess. He takes off sometimes and goes up to Galloping Mountain or to the city, and he always comes back. God knows why. This town never done anything for him or any of us. He says it’s the same everywhere, christawful jobs and treated like shit. He only got to Grade Three or like that. The best job he’s ever held was sectionhand on the CPR, but that quit in the Depression. Sometimes he’d feed us by snaring or shooting jackrabbits. He taught us all how to shoot for meat, even if it was only rabbit.”

  “He’s not done too badly, when you think of it. You never starved.”

  “Sometimes damn near. But yeh. He hasn’t done so terrible. But try to tell him that. Jesus, he was some fighter in his day, though. He’s had his nose broken four times. I’ve seen him take a hundred-and-eighty-pound man and lift him and throw him about twenty feet. I guess the time I hit him he could’ve killed me, even then, if he’d put his mind to it. Now I think back on it, he didn’t do a damn thing. Maybe he was surprised. Or maybe not. When I joined the Army and had a bit of money, I told him I’d pay for him to get the dentist to put in some teeth for him, there, in place of them I knocked out that time. But he said no, he was getting along okay without them.”

  “Did he really used to tell you those stories when you were a kid, Jules?”

  “Yeh. Sometimes even now, when he’s drunk, but he don’t remember them so hot any more.”

  “Tell me them,” Morag says.

  “You wanna hear? Why?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I like stories, is all.”

  “You’re a funny girl, Morag.”

  But he puts an arm around her, and they walk the chill mudcarpeted streets beside the empty trees and the quiet half-dark houses, and he tells her. Stories for children. As they walk together with their arms around one another, like children away from home with the night coming on.

  Then they are at Logans’ on Hill Street. They kiss, and want one another but cannot because there is no time left and no place to go.

  “So long,” Jules says. “I’ll be seeing you.”

  And goes.

  The next day, Morag stands at the corner where Hill Street touches Main. The Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders march through the main street of Manawaka. It is very exciting. People wave and shout. The soldiers grin a little but do not look around. Eyes front. They are in dress uniform, khaki jackets and tartan kilts, the Cameron plaid. The pipers walk ahead, leading. They are playing “The March of the Cameron Men.” It has a splendour in it. You could follow that music to the ends of the world.

  It is in fact to the end of their world that most of these men are following the music.

  The news of Dieppe changes the town of Manawaka. It will never be the same again. Not until this moment has the War been a reality here. Now it is a reality. There are many dead who will not be buried in the Manawaka cemetery up on the hill where the tall spruces stand like dark angels. There are a great many families who now have fewer sons, or none.

  Morag reads the casualty lists. Column after column, covering page after page, it seems, in the Winnipeg Free Press. Among the men from Manawaka, she looks for those she knows.

  Chorniuk, S. (That would be Stan Chorniuk, from the BA Garage.)

  Duncan, G. (That would be Mavis’ cousin George.)

  Gunn, F.L. (From Freehold, but no relation to Morag.)

  Halpern, C. (Jamie’s brother.)

  Kamchuk, N. (Nick, who quit school after Grade Ten.)

  Kowalski, J. (Steve’s brother.)

  Lobodiak, J. (Mike’s brother John, the handsome one.)

  Macalister, P. (The banker’s son.)

  Macdonald, G. (Gerald, who used to work in the butcher’s.)

  MacLachlan, D. (Lachlan’s son Dave, who would’ve taken over the Manawaka Banner.)

  MacIntosh, C.M. (Chris, son of the High School janitor.)

  McVitie, J.L. (The lawyer’s son, Ross’ brother.)

  And on. And on.

  She has looked first to see, and there is no Tonnerre listed. Did he get away? It is somehow difficult to believe that anyone could have got away.

  The newspapers for days are full of stories of bravery, courage, camaraderie, initiative, heroism, gallantry, and determination in the face of heavy enemy fire. Are any of the stories true? Probably it does not matter. They may console some.

  What is a true story? Is there any such thing?

  The only truth at the moment seems to be in the long long lists of the dead. The only certainty is that they are dead. Forever and ever and ever.

  Morag lies awake, thinking of the last time she saw Jules. Wondering if she ever will see him again. If he will survive.

  SKINNER’S TALE OF LAZARUS’ TALE OF RIDER TONNERRE

  Well, my old man, he told me this about Rider Tonnerre, away back there, so long ago no one knows when, and Lazarus Tonnerre sure isn’t the man to tell the same story twice, or maybe he just couldn’t remember, because each time he told it, it would be kind of different.

  Anyway, there is this guy, away back then, and they call him Chevalier–Rider–because he handles a horse so good and because his own horse is a white stallion name of Roi du Lac, King of the Lake, and how Rider got that horse is–he got it in a kind of spooky way, because once in a dream he saw it and it spoke to him and told him to spend one whole night beside this certain lake, see, which everybody believed was haunted or like that, and Rider did that, even though anybody else would’ve been scared to, see, and just about dawn, this huge white stallion came up out of the lake and stayed with Rider ever after. Of course it could’ve swum from the other side, or something, but the way Lazarus told it, that horse had special powers. I dunno if it ever talked except that once in a dream, though. And that Rider, there, he could also ride a bull moose, and sometimes he used to do that, just for a joke, and to scare the hell out of guys who bragged how strong and great they were.

  Another thing is that Rider was also called Prince of the Braves. He wasn’t all Indian, though. He was Métis, only back there, then, our people called themselves Bois-Brûlés. Burnt wood. I dunno know why. Maybe the fires they made to smoke the buffalo meat. Maybe their own skins, the way they looked.

  Okay, so this Rider, eh, he is so goddamn good on a horse he can outride any man on the prairies. They have races, see, and he always wins, him and King of the Lake. And Rider’s rifle, now, it’s called La Petite, and he’s so good that he can be going full gallop on that stallion, and he never misses a buffalo at one thousand yards or like that. He’s about seven-feet-tall, and he wears a big black beard.

  Now, one time there was a bunch of Englishmen–goddamn Anglais, as they used to be called–and they came in to take away the Métis land and to stop the people from hunting buffalo. And these guys had a bunch of Arkanys with them.

  (Arkanys?)

  That is how my dad called the Scotchmen. Men from Orkney, I guess. So a bunch of the Métis, there, they said Shit on this idea: they’re not coming here to take over our land and stop us from hunting. But they sat on their asses all the same and didn’t move. So that Rider Tonnerre, he says We’re gonna hunt these Anglais and Arkanys like we hunt the buffalo, so c’mon there, boys. It was some place around Red River, there, and they see all the
se Englishmen and their hired guns the Arkanys.

  (Hired guns? I bet they weren’t!)

  Sure, they were. Anyway it’s just a story. So Rider Tonnerre and the others, they make an ambush, see, and the other guys fall for it and ride straight in. So Rider, he starts picking them off with his rifle, La Petite, and the other Métis do the same. The English and the Arkanys try to shoot back, but they’re not doing so hot, and in the end every single one of them got killed. And one of Rider’s men made up a song about it, only my old man, he don’t remember it. But he said his father, Old Jules, used to sing it sometimes.

  (Hey–I know. That would be “Falcon’s Song,” and the battle would be Seven Oaks, where they killed the Governor.)

  That so? I never connected it with that, because my dad’s version was a whole lot different.

  SKINNER’S TALE OF RIDER TONNERRE AND THE PROPHET

  Another time, a long time later, I guess, because Rider Tonnerre was an old old man, anyway, another time, there, the government men from Down East, they’re really getting mean and they plan on getting the Métis land, all of it. They are one hell of a mean outfit, and at least I’m damn sure that much of the story is really true. They send in men to take all the measurement of the land, so’s they’ll know how much they got when they get it. So Rider Tonnerre, he says to himself The hell with this. He is an old man, so he knows he can’t be leader, see? But he knows somebody who can. Somebody who is just waiting the chance. Now this guy is–I guess you’d call him Prophet. He is like a prophet, see? And he has the power.

  (The power?)

  He can stop bullets–well, I guess he couldn’t, but lots of people, there, they believed he could. And he has the sight, too. That means he can see through walls and he can see inside a man’s head and see what people are thinking in there. He’s Métis, but very educated. How the hell he ever got to get that way, I wouldn’t know.

  (You’re talking about Riel.)

  Sure. But the books, they lie about him. I don’t say Lazarus told the story the way it happened, but neither did the books and they’re one hell of a sight worse because they made out that the guy was nuts.

  (I know.)

  Well, the Prophet, then, he’s a very tall guy, taller even than Rider Tonnerre.

  (I thought he was supposed to be a very short guy.)

  No. Very tall. And he carries a big cross with him all the time–this protects him, like. He’s a very religious guy, see? Well, so here is our guys, not knowing what the hell to do, and the Prophet is trying to tell them, but all they’re actually doing at the moment is hunting, drinking and screwing. So then, Rider Tonnerre, there, he goes to all the families of our people and he tells them a gutted jackfish would have more guts than what they’ve got, and this really shamed them. They really only needed somebody to tell them to get up off their asses and oil their rifles for a different kind of hunt. So they went along with the Prophet, and they took the Fort, there.

  (They lost it again, though.)

  Yeh, the government from Down East sent in about ten thousand soldiers, with cannon and like that. But that wasn’t the end of it, by God.

  SKINNER’S TALE OF OLD JULES AND THE WAR OUT WEST

  It would be some time later, out west, near Qu’Appelle or around there in Saskatchewan, and my grandad old Jules who was just a young guy then, he was out there. He was a good hand with a rifle, and he went out to fight with the Prophet’s men, because the Métis were putting on a war, there, for their land, see? Having lost it all around here, around Red River. So they got the Indians to join them, the Crees and Stonies and like that.

  (Big Bear. Poundmaker.)

  Yeh, those chiefs. And more. Lots more. I don’t know their names. They weren’t as good with a rifle as our people, but they were pretty damn good and they had a lot of men. Anyway, the way my grandad told it–at least, the way Lazarus says he told it–is that when Jules got there, things were going good. The Prophet and his guys and the Indians and their guys, they’d just beat the shit out of the Mounties at someplace, and everybody was feeling pretty fine. But what happens then? What happens is that the government from Down East sends in this fucking huge army, see? Not just with rifles, hell no. They’ve got the works. Cannon, even machine guns probably, if they were invented in those days. So the Métis are trying the old ambush, like a buffalo hunt. Well, Jules is dug in really fine, there, covered up in a pit with poplar branches and that. And he’s sniping and picking off soldiers, and he gets him maybe a dozen or so. The guy they call Dumont, the lieutenant, like, he wants to attack in real full strength, but the Prophet, he’s walking around with his big cross, waiting for the sign. From God, I guess. And Dumont’s losing his mind because he wants to attack so bad he can taste it, but the Prophet keeps stalling. And Jules and them, they’re still picking off as many soldiers as they can. Well, the Prophet waits for the sign a bit too long, because by that time the big guns begin. Jules stays right there in his cover, eh? All that yelling and firing and the big guns–he figures he’s a dead duck if he breaks his cover. Guys dropping all around. Dead horses. Jesus, I always thought too bad about the horses, eh? They never done a thing to deserve it. But got shot just the same. Anyway, Jules picks off fifteen or so of the Eastern men before he gets a bullet in the thigh. Then he passes out.

  When he wakes up, he’s all covered in stiff blood, and he can hardly move, and he’s still buried in poplar branches, and the whole goddamn thing’s all over and everybody else is gone. He doesn’t move for one whole day. He can’t, on account of his bullet wound. So then he crawls out and makes it to a farm somewhere, our people, and lives there for a while. Then he gets the hell out, and winds up here, finally, having brought a Saskatchewan Métis girl back with him. Oh yeh–and the name of that place, the last battle, it was Batoche.

  (They hanged Riel, the government did.)

  Yeh. They hanged him. Dumont got away, though, just like my grandad.

  SKINNER’S TALE OF DIEPPE

  ?

  Memorybank Movie: The Flamingo

  The RCAF has a training base at South Wachakwa, and this is a boon for many of the Manawaka girls. Not especially, however, for Morag. Sometimes she goes to the Saturday night dances at The Flamingo, with Julie or with Eva, who has become pretty in her pale and gutless way and who dances every dance because it isn’t only gentlemen who prefer blondes, it is every goddamn smart-aleck in the whole Airforce. Morag is too tall for many of them, not actually taller than they are, but five-eight and they prefer tiny frail creatures like Eva, who they can look down on and who will say Gee! Really? to everything they say. Morag has tried but is not the type. Sooner or later she either finds herself talking, which does nothing for her popularity, or else sinks into a semi-hostile silence, hating their assumed slickerdom, the way they are contemptuous of the girls they are trying to make. Not as though it might be something both might want to do, but only as though the girl were a mare to be mounted by a studhorse.

  The hell with them. They never talk to you as though you are actually there, but only put a knee between your legs and get a hard-on against you while pretending to dance.

  She hankers after them, their tallness, the sexy sweat smell of them. She wants them. She wants them to want her.

  When asked to dance, Morag does not know how to flirt. How do girls learn? Does she really want to join the circus, be a performing filly going through her prancing paces? Pride says Hell, no. Longing, on the other hand, says Try anything. She tries. What are the words? I’ll bet you say that to all the girls. Not much of an opener if they haven’t actually said anything. Gee, you’re some dancer.

  The words won’t come up into her mouth. How corny could you get, to talk words like that? The boy with whom she is dancing clamps a damp hand on her breasts and shuffles along, veering her backwards to “Tommy Dorsey Boogie.”

  “Not very talkative, are you?” he says.

  Morag swallows her nonexistent saliva. What is it makes your mouth so dry here?


  “Where–where are you going, once you’re finished training, I mean?”

  The airman shifts his gum to the other side of his mouth, just outside her radio-receiving-station ear.

  “How should I know?” he says.

  “What do you think of Manawaka?” Desperation. What would Betty Grable say, under similar circumstances? With a bust like hers, what would she need to say? Well, Morag’s isn’t so bad, either. But B. Grable isn’t about nine feet tall.

  “This town? It’s a dump,” the boy is saying. “I come from Calgary. Now there’s some place.”

  “Yeh. I guess so. I’ve never been–”

  Anywhere. Except Manawaka. This will change, though. By God and the Apostles and all the Saints, it will.

  “I don’t aim to stay here,” Morag finds herself blurting. “I’m gonna get to college when I’ve got enough money. I’m through High School now, I’ve just got a job. I’m working on the Manawaka Banner.”

  Silence from him. Busy with the gum. Spearmint.

  “That’s the town newspaper,” she adds.

  “Oh?” the airman says. “Well, thanks for the dance.”

  The dances are played in sets of three. You are supposed to keep the same partner for three tunes. This is the end of the second one.

  Morag bolts like a shot elk to the Ladies’ Powder Room, upstairs. Locks herself in the john. Her refuge, as of old.

  john of Ages

  locked for me

  let me hide

  myself in thee.

  She laughs, but quietly and to herself. Not that even a laugh aloud would be heard over the birdflock voices of the girls who are gathered around the mirrors, putting on lipstick for the millionth time. Some girls hide in the Ladies’ all evening.

  Well, tonight wasn’t as bad as the time she had been emboldened by a boy’s friendly half-shy smile and had asked him if he liked poetry. Hell no, he had said, he was raised on a chicken farm and hated the buggers. Thinking she had said poultry.