what had happened in the night was not a dream. The horse was real, its sudden, frightening presence a secret between us.
CHAPTER 14
I reduce speed as I enter a small Saskatchewan village, more of a crossroads than a village, really. A few buildings, including a squared brick tower with four walls bulging, as if the tower has been fattened up from inside. And then, as the speed limit changes again, a church with a signboard displaying a message in large white letters against a black background: WE’VE BEEN IN THE FORGIVENESS BUSINESS FOR ALMOST 2000 YEARS.
I drive past a farm where two mares stand behind a fence, one with head drooped at a telltale slant, a rich, dark mane sliding forward. It has been a long time since I thought of the wild horses in the camp; a long time since I’ve drawn them. They were so much a part of life there. In the background, circling, galloping through camp, all that energy and beauty. A long time, too, since I thought of my father chucking a piece of wood at me. Instinctively, I raise my hand to my forehead and feel the indent. There isn’t much to see, but I can still detect a slight depression.
In the seventies, in the early years of our marriage, Lena ran her index finger lightly down my forehead, tracing the scar. “How did you manage that?” she said. “I’ve asked before, and you’ve never really explained. It’s so vertical. The perfect scar. Vestigial. Like a genetic marking.”
“I was learning the rudiments of hand-eye coordination,” I said. “Trying to draw the back end of a horse. It’s a long story. Somehow connected to a place called Manzanar.”
We were side by side, sinking into the middle of a couch that had a deep sag. Closer than we would have been had we chosen the hard chairs that Lena was now eyeing, and that had been taken by others. It was an uncomfortable position, but I liked our bodies touching through our clothes: side, arms, thighs. It was our private circle of closeness, the one that was comforting and familiar. It was a warm fall night and we were in the basement of a house belonging to a couple we did not know well, but who lived at the end of the street. We had accepted the invitation to a barbecue because we were trying to be neighbourly. Lena and I were still new to the city, having spent the first five years of our marriage in Montreal. Lena was beginning to meet her colleagues at work, and I was alone in my studio much of the time, painting. Except for exchanging quick greetings with some of the neighbours, we had so far met only Miss Carrie on our street. And now we were at a barbecue, and the party had been rained on, a sudden storm.
Our hosts, Pete and his wife, Petra, ushered everyone inside and down the chewed-up basement steps to the rec room below. Pete stayed outside on the patio and dragged the barbecue under an overhang so that he could tend the charcoal. He was turning kebabs on long metal skewers, and every five minutes or so he appeared at the top of the basement stairs and shouted words of encouragement to the rest of us.
The other men in the room were big and heavy-set. A room of giants, taller than I. Six two and more, to my five nine. I’d have looked undernourished in a lineup beside them. Pete was an accountant; the other three men worked for him, in the same small company. They all bantered back and forth as if they knew one another well, as did their wives.
Despite the familiarity among them, Petra seemed unsure of how to keep the conversation going. The place smelled like basement, damp and mildewed; there was no pretending. There was a bar across one end of the room and a pea-green shag rug on top of the cement floor. We were all hungry and the men were showing signs of being tired of waiting for their food. Pete was taking a long time to cook the beef over charcoal.
One of the men, Ron, stood up across the room and came over and squeezed himself down into the edge of the couch next to Lena, which meant that our positions were suddenly altered. I was now higher than the other two, and it was Ron’s arm and thigh that were pressed into Lena’s—on her other side.
“I came over to talk to you,” Ron said, ignoring me, “since we’re neighbours now, more or less. I work at the sweatshop with those characters.” He gestured to the other men. He wore dark-rimmed glasses, and the lenses were so flecked with white specks or with food crumbs, I couldn’t understand how he could see.
No one seemed to know how to talk to me; they behaved as if I were an exotic whom they couldn’t be expected to understand. It seemed a surprise to them that I spoke English. They were careful and polite, and spoke loudly when they addressed me, as if I were partially deaf. And then, a series of strange confessions began. Ron’s wife offered up the information that her mother used to eat Chinese food once in a while. She ordered it from a takeout, she said. I took this to be some sort of nod in my direction and did not dare to look sideways at Lena.
One of the other wives, after a pause, said that she liked fortune cookies the best. As no one else had any further Oriental offerings, she added that she ate three rosehips every day before breakfast, rain or shine. While thunder crashed and boomed overhead, Petra gave up the information that she was a Roman Catholic, and that during her childhood, her mother had kept inkwells filled with water blessed by their local priest. This holy water was sprayed around the house during electrical storms to prevent lightning strikes and fire. Between storms, Petra’s mother sent her back to church with the inkwells so they could be replenished and blessed again. There had been a “coloured” family in the congregation, she added, and they were very nice people.
At this point, a thin yellow dog appeared, and yipped down the steps. Petra, talking rapidly and with a nervous laugh, told us the dog had taken to chewing the basement stairs, and had already chewed part of the first and second steps. Lena and I exchanged looks without being caught. Petra went up to the kitchen and came back down with a small, clear bowl of salted pretzels. She passed the bowl around and the other men dug deep. The pretzels were gone in an instant, and Petra set the empty bowl on the bar without offering to fill it again. Everyone in the room was sipping at a half glass of wine. Ron pulled his weight up off the couch and clomped up the stairs and returned with a bottle of Scotch. I had noticed the bottle earlier, in a kitchen cabinet behind glass doors, when I’d first come in. Ron poured a stiff drink for himself and offered it around. Petra looked positively frightened by this raiding of the house liquor supply, and then relieved when she heard a shout from Pete, above, saying that he was ready, that she should bring on the plates.
She went upstairs and Lena followed, offering to help, and five minutes later the two women reappeared, carrying dinner.
Pete, the other three men and I had been apportioned three cubes of beef, one medium potato and four green beans. On the women’s plates were two cubes of beef, half a potato and three beans. I tried to imagine the conversation between Pete and Petra while they were doing the calculations, but I couldn’t come up with the words. Ron barrelled down the steps with a new bottle of wine and served it out among the men.
We all bent over our laps, and the plates were emptied in moments. Except for Pete, the other men stood in unison and began a silent, undeclared hunt for food. I followed. Up and down the steps, into the kitchen and back again. The word
And then, as if on cue, a chain of events familiar to everyone but Lena and me began to unfold.
Petra announced, “Button-button time,” and the men tromped up the stairs and called out to me to join them while the women chose a hiding place for a large black button. The only rule, according to Petra, was that the button must stay in the basement.
Back we came. I looked at Lena, who was still on the sagging couch, and I reached down and squeezed her hand. If the game was meant to be fun, no one was laughing. The men were milling about, searching for the button. Ron was on hands and knees, his thick palm groping beneath an armchair. I stood like a statue. Others were crawling across the floor while Petra and another woman called out, “Warm! No. Cold. You’re freezing. Ice!” And then, in sing-song voices, “Someone in the room is boiling. You’re hot!”
