Requiem

was never in a good mood after reading about bombings and invasions and the sinking of ships. The more he read, the more he scowled and said that we would be in the camp for a long time. At the dinner table, he railed on about the war and snapped at us if we weren’t paying attention. Mother did not comment. She did not argue with Father; nor did she stick up for us when he was in a bad mood.

Father and the other men talked when they were outside, and passed on news that came to camp. Everyone was interested in knowing what Japan was doing in the war, because whatever Japan was doing could also affect us; it was as if we were somehow to blame.

After another cold winter in the camp, everyone was anxious to have warm weather again, especially Hiroshi, who had one of the biggest jobs of all—carrying water up the hill. The large communal tanks were in place and that made the job a little easier, but the tanks were across the road and partway down the hill, towards the river. Every family needed its water barrels replenished daily, for household use. In our family, from the beginning, that had been Hiroshi’s job.

The worst time for carrying water was during the winter, because the path down the side of the hill was slick with ice. Father had made attachments from rope to provide traction for Hiroshi’s gumboots, and those fit at grip sites around his ankles and beneath the soles of his boots. Every day, he had to slip and slide down the hill and back up again. When the school year was in progress, he lugged water before and after classes. Father made him fetch water for Ba and Ji, too, because they were too old to do so themselves, especially during winter on the icy path. But when Father was out of earshot, Hiroshi swore. He swore with words I had never heard before. Nor did I know where he had learned them. All winter, he called the path to the water tanks “that goddamned icicle hill.”

I knew I would be taking over the chore of the goddamned icicle hill when I was older, and I did not look forward to that day. Father kept telling me I had to work at strengthening my arms and back, and this worried me. I did not give much thought to the job Hiroshi would move on to when it would be my turn to take over icicle hill. Whatever the job would be, I knew Hiroshi would complain and swear even more.

When Father was not around, when I was alone or with my brother, I went to the lean-to where the wood was stored and practised placing the Jack-pine pole across my shoulders to test the amount of weight I could bear. There was a nail at each end of the pole and I tried to balance a bucket on each side, the way Hiroshi did.

“You can’t do it!” he shouted at me. “You’re too scrawny. Anyway, why bother trying? You have to grow bigger before you can do what I do.”

I did not say what I thought. That he sounded full of anger, just like our father.

One morning in spring, I got up at the earliest light, while the camp was still quiet. I slipped out of bed and dressed and began to walk up the sloped path behind the shacks. Hiroshi and I sometimes came up here together, and sat on tree stumps and played Rock-Paper-Scissors—Jan-Ken-Po. Because I was alone now, I skirted the trees behind the outhouse buildings, where the ghosts gathered. A few people were outside their shacks, and some men were already up and working in the garden across the road. I continued up towards the Bench, and heard a sudden noise above me. Before I could react, I was startled by horses that burst past me at a gallop. I jumped to one side of the path and watched in excitement as the wild animals raced to the camp below. Maybe I had disturbed them; I didn’t know. They galloped in and around the shacks, circled back, raced through again and disappeared up a trail that curved around the mountain at the far end of camp. There were shouts as people ran outside to watch. I counted the horses as they raced by. One, two, three … eleven in all, tangled manes flying.

I had not tried to draw a horse since the year before, when Father had thrown the chunk of wood at my forehead, but I decided I would try again, this time using a real horse as my model. Hiroshi and I began to stay outside as much as possible so we could keep a lookout for the horses, each of us for a different reason. Our vigilance was rewarded when the horses came back several days later, again without warning. I counted eleven, and this time they arrived in the early evening, nervous and alert. They slowed and pawed at the earth and snorted and nickered and began to graze on green shoots that were coming up along the edge of camp. When they had eaten enough, or for some other reason we could not discern from our safe distance, they took off abruptly and all together, and galloped away.

Hiroshi began to boast. He had seen several Native children around, higher up in the hills, and one of the older Native boys had been riding bareback on a wild horse, using only a homemade bit and reins made from rope. If someone else could do this, so could he, Hiroshi said. He wasn’t certain how the boy had tamed the horse. Nor was he certain that he would be able to ride without a saddle, but he was going to give it a try.

I, too, wanted to ride, maybe one of the smaller horses—a colt, perhaps—but most of all I wanted to draw one of these beautiful animals. I had a pencil with an eraser, and I tried many times to capture the likeness, always starting with a suggestion of mane and the long, sloping lines of the neck and head. Every time I tried, I ended up erasing more lines than those that remained, and my drawing became a mass of smudges. I wanted to create an animal mid-gallop, nostrils flared, head stretched forward, eyes looking directly out of the picture—the way the horses sometimes looked at me as their bodies hurtled past.

I tried to draw on cardboard, and I drew on small fragments and chips from the ends of lumber that were strewn around the edges of the camp. Sometimes, I drew with a stick, scratching lines in the dirt. When I did have a piece of paper, it was usually brown and bloodstained, old wrappings that had come from Ying’s store with coiled-up chimpo sausage inside. I was careful not to press too firmly, in case I had to erase and start over again. I tried not to make holes in the paper. I drew over the top of old newsprint that had been used for packing, and I filled the narrow borders of catalogue pages. I edged closer to the horses and composed a foreleg bent and off the ground, almost meeting mid-air with the hind leg when the horse was running. I tried to draw a horse that was at a standstill, peering around its long, flat forehead to look sideways at me with a large dark eye. I drew a horse straight on, with its front legs looking like knobbly stilts. I drew a mane that parted over the ears and swung over the highest part of the horse’s face, above its eyes. I tried to capture the dip in the horse’s back and its scraggly tail. I drew legs that were half dark and half white.

I spent much of the spring and summer trying to draw those wild horses. And I found that I had to study the animals again and again to observe the angle of their legs and if they moved in the same way all together, or if the front joints were different from those at the back when the horses were in motion.

Hiroshi had found a long, rusted railway spike in the dirt on the garden side of the road, and he scrounged for a length of old rope and then tied the rope to one end of the spike. He told me that if he could figure out how to get the rope attached to the other end, the sharp end, and if he could make the two stay together without the rope slipping off, he would get his homemade bit into a horse’s mouth. He kept an extra length of rope handy for a rein. He had already chosen the animal he wanted to ride: the tallest, one that had a reddish coat and mane. He did not want Father to know about this, so he hid the spike and rope under his pillow and slept on top of them every night. Sometimes he forgot them in our bed in the morning, so I brought them outside and told him I would tuck them behind the woodpile. When the horses came, Hiroshi ran to the woodpile to get the spike and rope. But when he tried to edge close to the herd, the horses skittered off, left and right. Eventually, after several weeks, he grew tired of this and gave up. But I did not stop trying to draw them.

One night, I was awakened by a noise that sounded like an explosion, a huge snorting sound. It was a warm night, and because of the heat, Mother had left the door open with only a thin blanket hanging from the frame, hoping that a bit of breeze would come in around the edges. I was lying on the mattress beside my brother and sister, and I heard the snorting sound again, but I could not understand why the others weren’t awake. How could they sleep through such noise? Because I was at the edge, I slid silently out the end of the bed and went to the kitchen. There, in the open doorway, was a horse’s head, a huge dark head tangled in the blanket, tossing back and forth. The front of the horse’s body was almost inside our kitchen. I stood where I was, unable to move.

In an instant, Mother was beside me, pulling me out of the way. She crossed the narrow kitchen and waved her arms, and this startled the horse so that it backed out of the doorway and galloped off, its hooves slamming the earth as it ran.

I knew, even in the dark, that Mother was shaking. She did not light the lantern. She composed herself, and rearranged the blanket in place over the doorway while the others, even Father, slept on.

“Shhh!” she said. “We won’t wake anyone. Go back to bed now and don’t make a noise.” But before I returned to the bedroom, she pulled me close to her and held me tightly, as if she might lose me if she let go.

In the morning, I wondered if I had dreamed the horse in the doorway. But I saw from Mother’s face that