The Diviners

  “Could I have a copy of the words, Pique?”

  This was apparently all she could say. Pique’s fingers tightened around Morag’s, then let go.

  “Sure. I’ll write them out for you now.”

  That evening, when Morag was having dinner alone, the phone rang. Morag, wanting only to be left to herself to think, answered reluctantly.

  “Hello.”

  “Morag? Billy Joe. I thought I oughta phone you, maybe. Jules, he’s not so good.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Well, I don’t know that I oughta say, like. He’s sick.”

  “What is it? Is he in hospital?”

  “No. He won’t go.”

  “What is it?”

  Then Billy Joe’s voice, uncertain, telling her.

  “Billy. In his throat?”

  “Yeh.”

  “Where is he?”

  Billy gave the address.

  “Do you think he’ll see me, Billy?”

  “Yeh. I think so.”

  “He didn’t say he wanted to see me?”

  “Well, no. But–”

  “Never mind. He wouldn’t. It doesn’t matter. I’ll get the seven o’clock bus. I’ll be there about ten. Is he–is there a woman with him?”

  “Not now,” Billy Joe said. “Not after he got real sick.”

  Royland drove Morag to the bus station in McConnell’s Landing. She told him what had happened.

  “Look, Royland, phone over to A-Okay’s, will you, and just tell Pique I decided to go in and spend a few days with Ella and Mort, and I’ll be back before she goes.”

  “Okay. But are you sure she shouldn’t know?”

  “No, I’m not sure of a damn thing. But I think it’s better to wait and see how he is, and also what he wants me to tell her.”

  “Yeh. Okay. You gonna be all right, now, Morag? You seem pretty shaky. Want me to come along with you?”

  “No. But thanks anyway.”

  The bus crawled along the highway. Morag shut her mind, as she was sometimes able to do in time of need. If she began thinking about Jules now, about his whole life, about the way he looked when he was young, she could not face whatever it was that she would have to face.

  The place was on Spadina, a three-storey house which seemed to be slumped in upon itself with the years and lack of repairs. Billy Joe answered the door. He had been waiting for her. Morag had not seen him for–how long? Nearly nineteen years. Was that possible? Indeed. Billy Joe looked shorter than she had remembered. His hair was still black as crows’ feathers, but his face was seamed and wrinkled, even though he could not be more than in his early fifties. He evaded her eyes.

  “I dunno if I done the right thing, Morag, phoning you. I never told him I done it, yet. You can’t do nothing. We got two rooms, top floor. C’mon.”

  Outside the door to Jules’ room, Billy Joe stopped. He looked oddly determined, as though Jules might not approve of what he had done, but also as though he knew that this was necessary and what Jules wanted even though in an un-admitted way.

  “You go in,” he said.

  Then he left her, and went into his own room. Now Morag was afraid. Not afraid, any longer, that Jules might mock her or tell her to get out. Not that, not now. Simply afraid of what she might see, of how he might look. Afraid that she might have to look at something she could not bear to look at. She opened the door. One ceiling light, not more than forty-watt, was burning, and the small room was shadowed. The usual one-room setup. Discoloured linoleum on the floor. A table, a couple of straight chairs, a hotplate, a cupboard. Tatty lace curtains on the window. And in one corner, a double bed with a grey blanket.

  Jules was lying outstretched on the bed, his arms bent upwards and his hands clasped behind his head. He was wearing an old pair of blue jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, the kind you buy at the cut-rate clothing stores for $3.33 or thereabouts. He looked more like himself than the last time she had seen him. His leather belt, though, wasn’t his old one–this was wider, new, with a clasp buckle in brass braid. Then Morag remembered he’d given his old belt to Pique. His hair was now nearly as long and as grey as her own. He was much thinner, but not with the hard leanness of his young manhood–this was a different thing, the erosion of the flesh. His face looked bonier, but the same, the face of Skinner Tonnerre, and behind and within that face, the face of Lazarus. There were no outward signs of the sickness. What had she expected?

  His eyes were open and he was looking fixedly at the dull light on the ceiling. He heard the door open and turned his head.

  “Billy–”

  Then he saw who it was, and raised himself on one elbow.

  “For God’s sake–what’re you doing here?”

  His speaking voice had always had that gravel quality. Was it increased so much now, or did Morag only imagine it? She closed the door behind her.

  “Billy Joe phoned me. Maybe you don’t want me to be here, Skinner. But I’m here. I won’t stay long.”

  Jules sank back. And, strangely, laughed. A grating sound which made him cough in spasms. He turned away and spat into a basin beside the bed.

  “Do you want some water?” she asked, helpless.

  “Rye would be better,” he managed at last. “There’s a bottle in the cupboard. Mind getting it? Bathroom’s on the floor below. Get some water, eh?”

  She did, and poured stiff drinks for them both. Jules did not get up from the bed. He propped himself on an elbow, again, and gulped the drink quickly.

  “I don’t see why you came, Morag.”

  No way of talking to him any differently, now, than she ever had. No way of saying everything she would like to say, either. Maybe none of it really needed saying, after all.

  “You crazy bugger, I wanted to see you, that’s all. Billy told me. Don’t blame him.”

  “No. It’s okay.”

  This Jules was different. Perhaps he, too, had found that although you needed to do battle, you didn’t always need to, every minute. Or was she interpreting him, as usual, only through her own eyes? How else could you interpret anyone? The thing now was not to interfere, not to enter fear. She would, of course. It was her nature.

  “Jules–maybe you should go into hospital? What did the doctor say? Maybe they could–”

  She sat down beside him on the bed. He put one of his hands on her wrist, not the angry gesture of years ago. Now, a still-strong but almost neutral touch.

  “They couldn’t,” Jules said. “You know, Morag, I was always pretty mad, there, about Lazarus not being taken to the hospital. And I tried, you remember, to get Val to go, but she wouldn’t stay, and I thought she was a crazy woman. I see now it wasn’t like that. By the time they got around to needing a hospital, it was already too late. Except that for them, there, it wasn’t the same as with me. With them, it was somebody’s fault or everybody’s fault, and it started a long way back, but with me, it’s just bad luck. I had some luck in my time. It’s run out, that’s all.”

  Morag’s mind fought this concept.

  “If you’d been president of the Royal Bank of Canada, they’d have every specialist on the continent in, and–”

  Jules laughed again.

  “And in the end, it would’ve made no damn difference. You think I want all that? People punching you here and there, tubes down your nose, parts of you cut out like you were beef being butchered? The president of the Royal Bank can keep it. It’s all shit to me.”

  “Yeh. Okay. I won’t say any more.”

  He motioned to her to pour another drink. It was only when she saw the sweat on his forehead and around his mouth that Morag realized he was dwelling within the kind of physical pain which she had never experienced and could not imagine.

  “Jules–did he give you anything for–I mean–”

  “Yeh. Second shelf of the cupboard.”

  She got the bottle of tablets, and he swallowed three. Lay back for a while. Then raised himself again, and drank.

  ??
?I haven’t sung for some time, here,” he said. “It was gonna stop soon, anyhow. Lotsa good young singers around now. Jesus, the shitty gigs Billy and me have had these past coupla years. Well, never mind. I didn’t do so bad. I’ve done what I wanted to do, mostly.”

  What would he be recalling, now? What memories of uncaring audiences, in fourth-rate dives? She would never know. He contained his own pain.

  “Pique’s going west again, Skinner.”

  He half sat up and looked at her.

  “Yeh? Where?”

  “To Jacques’ place. She went there, before, after she saw you in Toronto that last time. She went to Manawaka and then up to Galloping Mountain. She only just told me. She’s been writing to him. He’s not like you–you never wrote letters, remember? She’ll be going soon. Maybe she’ll be back, and maybe she won’t.”

  Jules reached out to the floor for his drink. When he faced her again, it was with some residue of the ancient anger, the ancient grief.

  “You let her be, see? You just let her be.”

  Even now, he felt he had to speak like that, did he? And perhaps he did, perhaps he did.

  “She sang me one of her songs,” Morag said. “I brought the words. That’s all. Just the words. No music. I don’t know about all that. So you can’t hear it. Unless she comes here.”

  “No,” Jules said. “I don’t want her to come here. Not with me like this. Don’t tell her, either, you hear? If you do, she’ll be here. Yeh, it would be good to hear it. But there’s no way. Let’s see.”

  He reached out for the paper, and read the words. Handed the page back to Morag, then changed his mind and took it again.

  “Yeh. Well. I’ll keep this. You can get another copy. You can tell her–oh, the hell with it, you don’t need to tell her anything. Nobody does.”

  They drank some more rye, not speaking much. Jules’ voice seemed to have run out and he spat more frequently into the basin beside the bed. He was getting fairly drunk now, and his pain was lessened by the pills and the rye. The pain in his throat, anyway. The night was wearing on. Finally Morag got up and turned out the light. Kicked off her shoes and lay down beside him, both of them clad, lying silently, connected only by their hands.

  Then Jules turned to her and put his arms around her, and she put her arms around him. The brief sound in the darkness was the sound of a man crying the knowledge of his death. ln the morning, Morag left before he wakened.

  Morag, unable to write, sat at the table looking out at the river. She had been back for four days now. Had pretended all was fine. Pique was preparing to leave within the next week or so, as usual vague about the time of her departure.

  How can I not tell her about Jules? How can I tell her? He doesn’t want me to tell her. He doesn’t want to see her. He wants to see her, but not for her to see him.

  The aeons ago memory. The child saying I’ll just go up and see my mother and father, now, for a minute. And Mrs. Pearl, holding tightly to the child’s wrist, saying No you don’t; they’re too sick to see you; they don’t want to. They had wanted to see her; they had not wanted her to see them. The gaps in understanding, the long-ago child wondering what was being kept from her, wondering why they did not want to see her. Morag had been five. Pique was not a child. Nevertheless, she would want to see him and would not likely understand why she must not.

  The truck drew into the driveway that evening. Jules’ old pickup truck. For an instant Morag thought he might somehow have had a reprieve, the doctor having diagnosed wrongly.

  Billy Joe got out of the truck and came inside. His face wore its usual masked expression, but only just.

  “Billy. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Yeh. He’s dead.”

  Morag poured them both a drink, and Billy Joe drank without saying anything.

  “It happened very quickly, didn’t it?” Morag said, numbed. “I guess that’s lucky for him, although it’s hard to think of it that way. It’s not usually that fast. Is it?”

  “He didn’t wait for it,” Billy Joe said.

  Just that. He didn’t wait.

  “I see.” Her voice had an unreal calm. “Billy–how did he–”

  Billy Joe turned to her. Jules had been his partner, his songbrother. How could she know anything about that, about what Jules and Billy Joe had been to one another, over more than twenty years?

  “It don’t matter, how he done it,” he said with finality.

  No use asking. Billy Joe would never say.

  He fished in his pocket and drew out something. Jules’ knife, the knife of his father Lazarus. Morag looked at it.

  “Billy–”

  “He wanted Pique to have his knife, that’s all,” Billy Joe said, very quietly.

  Morag picked up the knife. The blade had been sharpened since Jules first got it, three years ago. The steel was, of course, perfectly clean.

  “Where–where is he, Billy?”

  “I wired Jacques. He said to send the body to Galloping Mountain. So I done that. Jacques would’ve sent the money for that, but there was no need. Some of us here, we done that.”

  The Métis graveyard up at the mountain, where the grey wooden crosses stood above the graves of the Tonnerres. Nearby, Jacques Tonnerre had his livingplace, his living place.

  “Morag,” Billy Joe said. “I’m gonna go now.”

  “Yes. All right.”

  Morag wanted to hold onto him, and cry. But could not. Nor could he. And yet, at the doorway, they held to one another after all, momentarily. Then Billy Joe left without speaking again.

  Morag phoned to A-Okay’s and told Maudie to ask Pique to come over. Morag had not cried. When Pique arrived, she saw the knife on the table.

  “Ma–something’s happened to him, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes. He’s dead. Of throat cancer.”

  Abruptly, like that. Unable to speak it otherwise. Pique said nothing. Then crumpled, knelt, put her head on Morag’s lap and cried. But later, when she rose and saw her mother’s face, it was she who comforted Morag.

  After a while, they could manage to talk once more.

  “He didn’t know I was going to Jacques’ place, Ma. I wish he’d known that.”

  “He did know.”

  “How?”

  “I told him,” Morag said. “I–went in to see him. That’s where I went, a few days ago. Billy phoned me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Pique’s voice was sharp with hurt. “He didn’t want me to. He didn’t want you to see him, the way he was. He was in a lot of pain. I showed him the words of the song.”

  “He didn’t hear the music,” Pique said. “I wish he could have heard that.”

  “I know. It’s always too late for something. But he kept the words.”

  Pique picked up the knife.

  “Did he–is this for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it used for, Ma?”

  “What? Oh–that. Lazarus used it on his traplines, when he was young.”

  Would Pique create a fiction out of Jules, something both more and less true than himself, when she finally made a song for him, as she would one day, the song he had never brought himself to make for himself?

  Pique was going by train this time, thank God, not hitching. The day she left, Morag decided not to go to the station after all. She preferred to say goodbye to Pique here. Why put yourself through more harrowing scenes than necessary? A sign of advancing years, this, no doubt, but what the hell.

  Pique came over in the boat alone.

  “Hi, Ma.”

  Morag wondered when next she would hear Pique saying that. But did not express this thought.

  “Hi, honey.”

  “Listen, I’m not gonna stay long here,” Pique said nervously. “I can’t stand these long farewells. They destroy me.”

  “Yeh. Me, too.”

  “Ma–maybe this is kind of presumptuous of me, but–you wouldn’t consider letting me have that plaid pin, I suppose?”


  Morag thought about this for a while. Finally she shook her head.

  “Not right now, Pique. It’s some kind of talisman to me. You can have it, though, when I’m through with it.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “When I’m gathered to my ancestors.”

  Pique grinned.

  “That’s a new one in euphemism.”

  “It’s not euphemism,” Morag said, “and it’s not new, either.”

  “Well, I didn’t really think you’d want to part with it,” Pique said, “but I thought I’d ask. It’s okay. I hope I don’t get it for a long time, then.”

  She shivered slightly, and her eyes darkened.

  “Ma–” she added, “you’ll take care, eh? You’ll be okay?”

  “Of course. I am okay.”

  And in a profound sense, this was true.

  Pique put one thin brown arm around Morag’s shoulders.

  “So long, then.”

  “So long. Go with God, Pique.”

  “Ma, you have some pretty funny expressions.”

  “Now, then, don’t I just?”

  She watched while Pique walked across the meadow to the river and the boat. Then she walked back inside the house.

  Late that afternoon, Morag heard the train whistle from McConnell’s Landing. The train was moving west.

  Finally able to get back to work, after only several days, Morag did not welcome interruption. But it was Royland at the door. He rarely came in during what he knew were her working hours.

  “It’s not a good time to come over,” Royland said. “But maybe you won’t mind, this once.”

  “Royland–what’s the matter?”

  To superficial glance, Royland looked the same as always. The same old bushjacket and beat-up trousers, the same greybeard as neatly trimmed as ever. The usual smile. But something different.

  Please, Lord, no more anything for a while, eh? I’ve had enough for just now.

  “I went over to Tim Mackie’s place today,” Royland said. “His old well had seepage.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. I knew the moment I started that nothing would happen, and that is just what happened. Nothing. It’s not so strange. People often lose it, I mean the divining, when they get older. It’s a fact. It’s gone on with me for a long time.”