“Well–”
Julie. Scorn, or what? The other kids.
“I can’t,” Morag says. “I just can’t. Not right now.”
“Well, then, you must take your own time,” Miss Melrose says. “You will.”
Morag goes out of the room but not outside. Down to the girls’ john. Locks herself in a cubicle. What a terrible world it would be without lockable johns. The thought is funny, which is just as well, because she is crying her eyes out. For what? She is not sad. She has known for some time what she has to do, but never given the knowledge to any other person or thought that any person might suspect. Now it is as though a strong hand has been laid on her shoulders. Strong and friendly. But merciless.
Someone is walking over her grave.
When she goes back upstairs, she meets Miss Melrose in the hall.
“Oh, by the way, Morag, I meant to mention. Can you actually see the blackboard from where you’re sitting?”
“Well–”
Glasses are awful. No boy would ever look at you. Never.
“Have you ever had your eyes tested?” Miss Melrose persists. “Well, no. I–I don’t want to wear glasses.”
“Why not, for pity’s sake?” Miss Melrose, who is undoubtedly Past All That, sounds impatient and kind of cross.
“I look bad enough as it is,” Morag says.
When in doubt tell the truth, if you happen to think you know it. (Christie.)
Miss Melrose gives her a really strange look. Then sighs.
“Someday you may find out differently, Morag. Or maybe you won’t. Some never do, until it’s irrelevant. Look at it this way, then. You need your eyes. In the last analysis, they’re all you have.”
At the doctor’s office, after the drops are put in Morag’s eyes, the entire world swims and flounders in front of her. She gets only as far as the second line of letters on the chart. After that, blur all the way.
The new glasses are hideous. Round. Metal-framed. Morag now looks like a tall skinny owl whose only redeeming feature is a thirty-six-inch bust. She begins to wear her hair long again. If she puts it up, she looks like a Sunday-school teacher. In front of the mirror she rages and curses. Life is over. Having never begun.
“They look kind of distinguished,” Christie says.
“Shut up! Shut up! They look awful.”
“Oh, beggin’ your ladyship’s pardon. Shall I kill myself now or later?”
“Christie, leave the girl alone,” Prin says. “You should know better.”
“Why should I know better, then? I’m only the Scavenger.”
“That’s exactly all you are,” Morag says coldly.
Has she said it? How could she? How could she? How to make the words unspoken?
“Shut up, girl, or I’ll give you the back of my hand,” Christie shouts.
“I’d like to see you try,” Morag yells.
Christie looks at her a moment, then turns away.
“You know damn well I wouldn’t, Morag. It’s only my way of talking.”
“Christie–”
But he had walked out of the house, out to the stable, and hasn’t heard. She wants to go after him. But doesn’t.
Morag goes upstairs to her room. She looks out the window at the maple tree. Forgets about Christie. LEAVES! She can see the leaves. Individually, one at a time, clearly. She has not known before this that you are supposed to be able to see the leaves on a tree, not just green fuzz.
Excited, she looks for a long time. Then thinks for a while about the story that will never see the light of day. “Wild Roses.”
Hm. Sentimental in places? The young teacher not marrying the guy because she couldn’t bear to live on a farm–would that really happen? Maybe all that about the wild roses is overdone? Could it be changed?
Innerfilm
Morag living in her own apartment in the city a small apartment but lovely deep-pile rug (blue) and a beige chesterfield suite the thick-upholstered kind a large radio in a walnut cabinet lots of bookshelves a fireplace that really works
She has just had a story called “Wild Roses” published in the Free Press Prairie Farmer and is giving a party to celebrate with all her many friends
Shit. Who is she trying to kid? Worse than the story. Nothing will happen. Ever.
Innerfilm
Quiet funeral privately held in Cameron’s Funeral Home a whole lot of flowers snapdragons larkspur peonies florist roses Eva has brought wild roses and they are wilted and in a quart sealer Eva crying has been a real true friend and now it is too late for Morag to tell her so Morag lying in a white satin-lined coffin eyes closed face awfully pale and she is wearing a yellow silk dancing-dress she has never danced in it and now never will coffin is closed and hearse goes to the graveyard Christie is absent overcome with sorrow Stacey Mavis Vanessa Julie Ross Jamie etcetera crying in sadness wishing they had recognized the qualities Morag had before too late
Some time later it is found that among the things in her dresser drawer is a novel one of the finest ever written in a long time anywhere it is published Christie buys two bottles of rye on the proceeds (he better not!)
Morag never knows novel has been published (unless watching from somewhere, maybe?)
How corny can you get?
Memorybank Movie: Down in the Valley the Valley So Low Morag is moving slowly along the edge of the Wachakwa River. Bushes are everywhere–silvergreen wolf willow, chokecherry, pincherry, and a jungle of unnamed unknown bushes. If you don’t watch your step, here, you will slip and end up in the brown water. The river rattles over the stones, but the water is clear. How come the water is both brown and clear? Brown sounds murky. But this is as clear as brown glass, like in a beer bottle, or no, not that, not like that at all. What like? Like only itself, maybe, the Wachakwa River, in places only a creek. Crick. Some people say it like that. Different people say things differently. Eva says crick. Gus Winkler doesn’t know how to pronounce things right. Does Christie? Sometimes, sometimes not.
Another few steps and then the RAVINE. Why come here, when it is really spooky? Eerie. Eerie. What a word. Ee-ee-rie. She comes here often. Why doesn’t matter, here. The river is now flowing very far down there, and on the banks the grass doesn’t grow–just the bushes, bending over the ravine as though beckoned by the river below, as though wanting to go down there. (Pathetic Fallacy.) If you come here in spring, the marsh marigolds are out in masses down there on the water, and you can look at their juicy gold and green, little gold flowers connected to a whole web of green stalks and floating leaves.
Soon the swinging bridge. Yes, now. Who made it? How long ago? Ropes across the ravine, fraying ropes but still strong, and the pieces of split poplar to walk across, each joined to each by the old old ropes, and if you really did walk across, the bridge would sway and shake and maybe you would plunge down into the shallow water and the stones. Morag has never crossed this bridge. She wants to make herself do it. She could do it if she had to. She puts a hand on the poplar pole at the edge of the bridge. She will definitely do it this time. If she can do this, she can do anything. A sign. An omen. She has to make it come true.
She puts one foot on the bridge. It lurches. She leaps back onto safe ground.
She is suddenly convinced that the bridge is trying to send her plunging down into the ravine. She holds onto a willow branch, and it supports her. Pathetic Fallacy? What if Miss Melrose is wrong, though, just in that one way? Not that clouds or that would have human feelings, but that the trees and river and even this bridge might have their own spirits? Why shouldn’t they? The wolf willow and the chokecherry bushes and the tall couchgrass growing away from the ravine, and the river itself–no threat. Just the bridge. Who built it? Why does it still stay here, rickety, swaying? How old is it? Does someone sometimes patch it up, keep it going? Whose is it? Not hers, that is for sure. Something doesn’t want her to be here at all.
Then she hears someone. On the other side of the bridge. He comes out of the bushes
and steps onto the bridge. Beat-up blue jeans, brass-buckled belt, rolled-up shirtsleeves, brown hawkish face, dark slitted eyes. His straight black hair cut shorter these days than it used to be. Skinner Tonnerre.
He begins rocking the bridge, which swings like a dangerous hammock. Morag moves further back from it.
“Hey, look out, Skinner, eh?”
“Hi, Morag–I didn’t see you, there,” he grins, lying. “Whatsa matter? You scared? The bridge is okay.”
“I’m not scared,” Morag says angrily. “It’s just that–”
“It’s just that you’re scared shitless,” Skinner says flatly.
He gives out with the Tarzan yell like Johnny Weissmuller in the movies.
“TAR-MAN-GAN-EE!”
And walks across the bridge, swinging it violently. Morag looks away, expecting to hear his dying body go splat on the rocks below. But no.
“Want a cigarette?” he says, beside her.
“Sure.”
Morag has not smoked before, so does not inhale. He laughs at her, and shows her how. At first the smoke pinches her lungs, but she soon gets the hang of it.
“How’re you liking it at the Pearls’ place, then?” she asks.
It seems now to be quite natural sitting on the riverbank and talking to him, even though they don’t talk to each other in school. Skinner has been staying with Simon Pearl and his wife this year while going to High School. The Pearls have no kids and have offered to have Skinner board with them because the local welfare officer has said Skinner will never keep on going to school if he stays down in the valley with Lazarus and all, and that he is bright enough to keep on. Everybody in Manawaka knows about this, and many say it is foolhardy of the Pearls, who need not expect any gratitude from a halfbreed.
“It’s okay, I guess,” Skinner replies, but cautiously. “Mr. Pearl, he’s doing his good deed for the year, I guess. I don’t give a damn. The Welfare pays my board. Let ’em. My old man and my sisters, they think I’m nuts. The little kids, my brothers, they don’t think anything, but they say when am I coming back. I don’t give a fuck what any of them think.”
“You come down this way often?”
“Yeh. On Sundays. The Pearls go to church. I won’t go. Okay, Mr. Pearl says. No, he don’t. He says, Very well, then, Jules, go to the Catholic Church. But I won’t do that, neither.”
“Who–who made the rope-bridge, there, Skinner?”
“How should I know?” he says. But knows.
“You ever go back and see your folks, then? Now that you’re at the Pearls’?”
Skinner spits down into the ravine and half-closes his eyes.
“Naw. The hell with them. My old man’s always drunk, anyways, and the girls, they’re about the same. The little kids are just dumb brats. The old lady my Ma, she ain’t coming back, and good riddance to bad rubbish. Me and my old man, there, we don’t get on now. He thinks I’m a kid, but he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. We had a fight, there, and I knocked four of his teeth out. It really surprised him. Val reported me, the crumby little bitch. That’s why the Welfare said I had to move out. I would’ve moved out, anyways. Hey, Morag, want to hear a real poem?”
“What?”
He chants it.
“When apples are ripe they should be plucked,
When a girl is sixteen she should be fucked.”
Morag wants to touch him, to touch the black fine hairs on his arms, the bones of his shoulders, his skin smelling good, of fresh sweat. She edges away. Scared. What if it hurts? What if he makes her do it, and she decides at the last minute she doesn’t want to? What if what if what if.
“I’m not sixteen,” she blurts, and then would give anything to reswallow the words, make them unsaid, because what a dumb dumb dumb thing to say.
Skinner is laughing.
“Well, do tell! Guess you’re safe for a while, then, eh?”
She gets to her feet. Hovers. Undecided. Skinner remains sprawled on the grass. Looking at her.
“C’mon, Morag. It feels good. I bet you never done it, eh? I can do it with Ina Spettigue any time I like. She never even charges me. She likes what I got. Wanna see?”
He reaches for his fly buttons.
Morag runs. He does not follow.
When she is back home, she goes to her room and locks the door. Hating herself for having been scared. Slips one hand between her legs and brings herself, with her eyes closed, imagining his hard flesh bones skin on hers, pressing into her, feeling her tits, putting his cock there there there.
Next day at school, and forever after, she will not look at him, she promises to herself, never, not ever.
That evening, Morag starts talking to Christie, who is paring his fingernails really disgustingly with his jackknife. She does not talk to him much these days, and so he is surprised now.
“Christie–remember those stories you used to tell me when I was a kid?”
“Sure. How could I forget? Why?”
“Tell me them now, some.”
“Great jumping jesus, Morag, I thought you would’ve been past all of that.”
“Yeh. Well.”
Why does she want to hear? She doesn’t know. But the times when she was a kid and Christie would tell those stories, everything used to seem all right then.
“Okay, Morag, if you want. Let’s see.”
CHRISTIE’S TALE OF PIPER GUNN AND THE REBELS
Now Piper Gunn lived there along the Red River on his farm for more years than you could shake a stick at. And him and his woman had a fine family, too, five sons and five daughters, the boys all strapping and husky, and the girls all tall and as beautiful as tiger lilies. And Piper Gunn and his wife grew old, in time, and yet both together, for as is well-known, when the Angel of Death spread his wings out for them, they kicked the bucket the selfsame day, for neither could live without the other, so the story goes.
(You’re romantic, Christie.)
Hush, girl, I’m about as romantic as a pig in a trough and that’s the bloody christly truth of the matter, but can I help it if that’s how Death finally took up old Piper and his lady?
Now, then, when Piper was a real old man, and not working the land that much any more but leaving it all to his five sons, it happened that the halfbreeds around the settlement got very worked up. They decided they was going to take over the government of the place. So they got themselves a rebel chief. Short little man he was, with burning eyes. His name was Reel.
(Louis Riel, Christie. We took it in school. He was hanged.)
That’s the very man. Well, but he wasn’t hanged for a hell of a long time after the time I’m telling you. So this Reel or Riel, however you want to call him, him and his men took over the Fort there, and set themselves up as the government.
Now, all the Sutherlanders, over the long years, had kind of forgotten how to fight, eh? Peaceful farmers, they were, and their sons reared to that way. Not a mother’s son of them remembered the old days in the old country, except for Piper Gunn and a few oldtimers. They were not what you’d call a spineless lot, oh no. But they’d grown up here, farming. So when Reel took over, with his gang of halfbreeds, they didn’t know what to do. There was a lot of chewing the fat, but nobody moved. Reel and his men started doing a little shooting, do you see, and killed one or two Englishmen. But the Sutherlanders didn’t trust the goddamn English, them bloody Sassenachs from Down East, no more than what they trusted the halfbreeds. They kept themselves to themselves. So they sat on their butts and did nothing.
(The government Down East sent out the Army from Ontario and like that, and Riel fled, Christie. He came back, to Saskatchewan, in 1885.)
Well, some say that. Others say different. Of course I know the Army and that came out, like, but the truth of the matter is that them Sutherlanders had taken back the Fort before even a smell of an army got there.
(Oh Christie! They didn’t. We took it in History.)
I’m telling you. What happened was this. Piper Gun
n says to his five sons, he says, What in the fiery freezing hell do all of you think you’re doing, not even making a stab at getting back the bloody Fort? So his five sons, they said, We’re ready to try if you can think up a way of raising all of them Macphersons and Macdonalds and Camerons and MacGregors and all them. Piper Gunn rises to his feet, and him taller than his five sons even though pressing eighty, and not stooped one inch, no sir, straight as an iron crowbar.
I’ve played the pipes in sorrow, says he, and I’ve played them in joy and I’ve played them in bad times and in good, and I’ve played them to put the heart into the souls of men, and now I’ll play them for the last bloody time.
Will we come with you, then? asks his five sons. I’ll go alone, says Piper Gunn, for that was his way. So walk he did, along every farm on the river front, there, and he played the entire time. He began with the pibrochs, which was for mourning. To tell the people they’d fallen low and wasn’t the men their ancestors had been. Then he went on to the battle music. And the one he played over and over was “The Gunns’ Salute.” A reproach, it was.
The Sutherlanders listened, and they knew what he was saying. They gathered together and Piper’s five sons with them, and they took the Fort at the rising of the day the very next morning. The army from Down East got the credit, of course, but the Sutherlanders were a proud lot and didn’t give a christly damn. They let it be.
And Piper Gunn went home and hung up his bagpipes and they have been silent from that day to this, for he died soon after, and no one ever dared play them, for no one could ever play the pipes like Piper Gunn himself could play them.
(I like him, though. Riel, I mean.)
That so? Well, he had his points, no doubt.
(The book in History said he was nuts, but he didn’t seem so nuts to me. The Métis were losing the land–it was taken from them. All he wanted was for them to have their rights. The government hanged him for that.)