Embers

By J.M. Bridgeman

Wyn McBride is a woman "of a certain age," an artist with a condo in Vancouver, and a studio in the valley. She is blessed with good friends and a career she enjoys, and has crafted a comfortable life for herself as a single, divorced woman—a life that’s almost too comfortable. When her ex-husband, Bruce, decides to re-marry, Wyn is forced to return to their former home to tidy up unfinished business. With the help of the new buyer, Liam Kelly, Wyn cracks open a window into her past. Her search reveals unexpected secrets about her family, beginning with the discovery of where her ancestors came from and why they chose to leave Ireland. Inspired by what she finds, Wyn spontaneously decides to accompany Liam on a trip to Ireland. He takes her on a whirlwind tour featuring what Wyn’s friend, Lu, calls “deep travel”. As the two explore history, poetry, sculpture, and ancient sacred sites, Wyn’s self-awareness grows. Embers tells the story of mysteries revealed, blood memories, the healing power of art, and how maturity is often a pre-requisite for enlightenment and meaningful change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.M. Bridgeman
• Release date: Nov 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9780995287914

J.M. Bridgeman

J.M. Bridgeman, a graduate of Oak River Collegiate and the University of Manitoba, lives in British Columbia’s Fraser River Valley.

Book preview

Chapter 1

EN ROUTE—

CROWSNEST HIGHWAY, ROCK CREEK,

BRITISH COLUMBIA

Stop and start. Start and stop. My feet play the pedals. Clutch. Accelerator. Clutch. Brake. My right hand jerking the gearshift like a joy stick on this red rental van. A slow roll. Creeping. Crawling. Stopping. Moving again. Touch and go.

Halt. The flagperson, advising me well in advance: You can kill your ignition, ma’am. The wait is expected to be approximately twenty minutes. Twenty minutes more. Nodding an unhurried Thank you, I comply.

This is the surest sign of spring in this valley. The cattle drive. Blocking traffic as outriders coax the red and white Herefords, with a sprinkle of Black Angus calves and yearlings, across the twin lanes of the Crowsnest Highway, #3, just before Rock Creek. The herd moves as a swarm, one large shadow sundialling the face of the valley. As if the ground itself is flowing. Viscous. Its cooled surface belying the fire within. The green tinge on the gold hills signalling a return. Of warmth. Of light. Of time to take the animals off their alfalfa-bale feed on the home place up Dolomite Mountain. To transfer them beyond fences to summer range, the community pasture on Crown land, across the bridge and up the other side of the river.

These bovines do not seem to be in any hurry. Only the youngest calves show a bit of friskiness, darting among languid legs, churning up mini-billows of dust like smoke from the unpaved shoulder, eyed by anxious mothers. Double diamonds burned atop bony hips. Orange and red and yellow plastic tags stapled to ears. Branding is labour-intensive. Teams of ranchhands on horseback and on foot, circling a mini-bonfire, a firepit scooped from the dust and sweetgrass. The iron resting in the embers, at their hottest after the flames have died. Or do they have electric or propane irons nowadays? Like a barbecue lighter or a blowtorch? Riders hustling the young bulls and heifers through the smudge. Roping, flipping, tying, pressing the hot iron through sizzling hair, cauterizing the flesh. Some of them too startled to bawl. Untie the feet, jump backwards, get out of their way. Arms raised in victory like a rodeo competitor as the critter scurries away. Do they tag the ears at the same time? Castrate the bull calves? Or do they catch each animal, old and young, each mother and calf, and push them through chutes at a corral, one at a time, with no room to twist, no hope of escape?

Ten minutes.

Cowboys. Mares. Strays. Ballad of the Absent Mare. I don’t think he actually wrote that one, but it’s the best. The absolute best accompaniment to a long night of lovemaking. Our very own poet shaman.

Twenty minutes stalled in the centre lane trying to recite Leonard Cohen, rocking from cheek to cheek. My bobbing head, my hands slapping the steering wheel causing the flagperson’s eyes to check on me more than once. Palms drumming on thighs. Less conspicuous.

River. Flood. Bridge. Break up. Panic. I can see the river from here, its freshet just beginning, snow higher up yet to melt. The bridge over the Kettle River is just to my left, # 33 to Westbridge and Kelowna. The road to the Big White ski hill from this side of the mountain. No mare has run away. The cowboys that I can see all have their mounts perfectly under control. Like the Marlboro man. Like Clint Eastwood. Unforgiven.

It’s the cattle poem I’m looking for, flipping through the memory files in my brain. Come on, come on, Wyn. You know it. I do know that it’s not on any of these CDs. It’s not a song. It’s a poem. Who can trace the canyoned paths / cattle have carved out of time / wandering from meadowlands to feasts. That’s it. For E.J.P. Pratt would have loved it. Lucky for these cows, they are heading the other way. Out to the meadow, not in to slaughter and feasts. Not yet.

I once believed a single line / in a Chinese poem could change / forever how blossoms fell. I know. I know. I am so literal. But I love Cohen’s point. That blossoms fall here too. Get your nose out of that book. That cattle are driven here too, and they trace—that’s it—canyoned paths. Canyon country. Johnson Canyon. Rock Creek Canyon. Carved out of time.

I once believed.

A single line.

The herd has passed. The flagperson twirls her sign from Stop to Slow and gives me the nod. I start the engine, pull the convoy stacked up behind me along the ogee curves of the highway, tracing the gentle arc of the Kettle River. Now that it has butted its head on the mountain, and has made an abrupt left turn, both of us are heading east. I try to stretch my shoulders as I resume moving but it isn’t enough. I’m not used to driving a vehicle this large. After my trusty Rabbit. There is too much traffic backed up behind me. Including a Greyhound and more than one semi. HOVs. Working drivers. I should let them pass. And there is too much cold coffee building up inside me. I’ve been sitting here ignoring the flashing neon for twenty minutes. I need a pit stop.

Signal right. Exit into the parking lot. Dog friendly, a smaller sign says. Thank you. Thank you very much. Rush. The Gold Rush Motel. Or is it the Gold Pan? Whatever. Attached to the Kettle Cafe. At the door to motel reception, a chainsaw carving of a placer miner, wearing a battered slouch hat, squatting in the creek, his eyes fixed on the flecks falling from the swirling water on to the ridges of the pan he is rocking. The wood looks like cedar. Yellow cedar. The Tree of Life.

At the cafe threshold, the kettle holds me. Not a carved cedar pot of gold. Nor a copper cauldron. This kettle is a massive boulder, originally intrusive igneous, with a round depression, a smooth basin, worn into the rock, and there, sitting in the hollow, a perfect circle of stone. The sink and the sphere are both natural creations, tumbled in the swirl of the whirlpool, in the fall of the water from above. It’s part of the family legend, of the reason Great-grandfather Bullen chose to settle here, in the Kettle Valley. His kettle a drum with a round rock playing the music of the spheres.

I wonder how many of these granite balls disappear from this bowl? Walk away on two legs? Beneath the hemispheric dome of a surveillance camera. Blinking. I give it a fast wink and wave.

Restroom first. Then a rest. Coffee and deep fryer vie to dominate the airwafts. I head for the long communal table for conversation with the old guys, warming their hands on cold mugs. The regulars. Their baseball caps announcing previous employment, or generous children, or wives who frequent garage sales. John Deere. Calgary Tack and Tackle. Kal Tire. Wearing their caps indoors. Still one of the provincial idiosyncrasies I never fail to notice. Note to self: Wyn, let it go.

Gentlemen, I nod. Wasn’t sure I would make it. Thronged by a herd. Cows and calves. Like a bad movie, or a dream. Mostly Double Diamonds? The yearlings looked newly branded, I offer, throwing my observations on to the table for others to pick up on. Refraining from tossing in too much detail. Withholding the fact that my grandfather had once owned one of those ranches, down river, just up the road. The old Bullen place. The Rocking B brand.

Just our way of slowing down the traffic, the man in the apron adds as he pours me coffee into my travel mug.

No other takers on my conversation gauntlet.

Some of them are sporting coloured ear tags. What are those for anyway? Is that another tradition lost? More humane than branding, perhaps?

No, one of the commune ventures. He is wearing a Feed Store cap: Ranchers still prefer brands. Easier to see, to read, when you’re on the range, on horseback. To be able to separate out which ones belong to whom.

The tags, another offers, tugging down on the beak of his Blue Jays cap, they’re just record keeping. Some of them are colour codes, to tell which calf dropped from which cow. And the year they’re born.

Some of them have those little computer chips too. You know, like city dogs, to find the owners if they get lost. But those are more for the government.

An old BC Forest Services logo: Big Brother, counting coos. If somebody gets a sick one, they can soon tell where it came from. That’s one thing.

IWW, a union man: Bury it quick and don’t say aught. The others laugh or snort, letting me know that he’s kidding.

It’s been a few years since I’ve driven this highway. Ginseng fields. Plant nurseries. Tree nurseries. Ranch B and Bs. Trailer parks. Golf courses. Does this mean that there are fewer ranches running cattle?

Beaverdell Hotel: Not necessarily. The ranchers are open to anything likely to bring in a steadier flow of cash.

West Kootenay Power: Diversifying.

Rilkoff’s: Less demand for beef. Fewer people eating it.

Pope and Talbot: Can’t afford it.

PetroCan: All gone veggie-tarian, down at the Coast.

Not all of us, I counter. Some of us still fork out the cash, with our hands in the air.

Laughs and nods, as if they recognize me as a Vancouverite in spite of my attempted camouflage—jeans, black t-shirt, ball cap of my own. Maybe it’s the Esprit label that tipped them off. Or the sandals. Or the pedicure.

Talking is good. The coffee is adequate. The decor is Early Trucker. The carpet, like the hills, a dusty green and gold.

You’ve come a ways already. Where’re you heading? CBSA cap. Canada Border Services Agency.

Almost to the border. I can give him that much.

Midway? The next border crossing town.

Nah. The Alberta border. Almost. Just a bit past Sparwood.

You’re all right then. He’s concerned about cutbacks, the loss of twenty-four hour service, for crossing into Washington State. This here’s Boundary Country, he adds, as if that explains something.

I’m not planning to cross any borders. Thanks anyway.

You’ve still got a ways to go.

I pick up the key fob, nod a general thanks, a ‘so long’, and retreat into the gold and the green, bleeding together here in Boundary Country.

Just outside the Kettle Cafe, steps north of the border, where the river bunts the mountain, where the cattle cross the highway, it is here that I pick up Sylvain.

Chapter 2

GREENWOOD INN, GRAND FORKS, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Sometimes, it’s a good idea to change your routine, to get out of the house, out of town, out of the country if you’re so lucky. Or simply, to change beds, to sleep in another room in the house you’ve always lived in, and pretend to be free.

"Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping? Dormez-vous?"

Did I really hear that? Is it a memory, or a whisper?

Is that sunshine? Sunshine. That’s what is waking me. Neither Frere Jacques nor John Donne. Busy old fool, unruly sun. Get lost, sun. I’m enjoying myself here. I don’t want to get up. To wake up. I don’t want to break the spell.

Have I been hypnotized or something? Not by some magician. Hypnotized by the road, hitting the road, slipping the surly bonds of city, of urban living, crossing the bridge, escaping, to the freeway. Yes, but that was yesterday. Today is another day.

Look up, look way up.

Sun streaming in. High, like a clerestory window. The beams are angling down, fading the too-bright indoor-outdoor carpet, lighting up the bed. As if we are on an altar, centre stage.

Of course, morning sun in my eyes. Facing east. Settling in last night, everything was dark and the layout was strange and I had a choice of mattresses. Too tired to think about it, I never tried to figure out which direction to lay my head, forgetting, for one short night, to worry about not pointing the soles of my feet west, into the setting sun, the glassy sea. A cognitive artifact, of poor-Celtic provenance. Anyway, the sea is five hours away. English Bay and the lapping tongue of False Creek would be the closest saltchuck. Or would it be Burrard Inlet and its upped Indian Arm? Port Moody? Or Birch Bay? Or White Rock? Semiahmoo? Are they technically closer?

Monkey mind. Shut up, Wyn. Shut up.

The Greenwood Inn. Another provincial joke. Like What river carved the Grand Canyon? Hint. It’s not the Rio Grande. Where’s the Greenwood Inn? Why, in Grand Forks, of course. Greenwood, the town, is my usual destination, my choice of stopping place on this familiar route. I always pull off there. Contrary maybe, ignoring the logic of Midway, ten kilometres of defiance. Choosing a ghost town like Greenwood, in its prime when the mine was grinding, in the 1890s. Down to a few hundred souls these days. Even most of the Japanese Canadians relocated from the coast have moved on, or their children and grandchildren have, touching down, stopping in, on their way between cities. And the movie crews seeking cheap and accessible Victorian and Edwardian architecture. All have moved on, gone with the snow fallen on the cedars.

It must snow here, but how did they ever disguise the Ponderosa pines as cedar?

We had talked about it, about stopping in Greenwood. We had talked about a lot of things, from the minute he hopped into the cab, from his "Merci, madame, to lights out. Talked so much that I drove right past the turnoff to the old village site, past the church of so many brides, and the old bridge over to the other side. Never crossed my mind to point out how that bit of river frontage had once been in the family." How the train tracks, like a scar across the heart, cut the fields off from the water. How this bridge, Ingram Bridge, crosses what was once a ford, site of the iconic photo of great-grandfather driving his team, the Two Blind Mice, through the current to his ranch. That he and others, some of them, are still there, on the hillside overlooking the valley, a rusty page wire fence keeping the deer and cattle out. It is too early for lilacs anyway. No reason to stop.

Never offered to give him the express tour of Midway, the trees entwined in eternal friendship, the bridge with the sign forbidding jumping off.

We did stop just before Greenwood. Paused at the pullout, hiked over to the brink to visit Boundary Falls. From the high perch, the cascade below the small canyon seemed to roar. The touch of its spray made my skin tingle. I could see how gentle water, pressed into a narrow chute, tumbling over a granite escarpment, has the power to erode the rock beneath its fall, wearing it down, carving cliff pools or kettles. It runs into the Kettle River just a few miles south, I pointed out to Sylvain. The dam here used to power the mine and the town. Towns. All gone now, except for Greenwood.

It is beautiful. Let’s go down, he said.

But I hesitated about attempting the steep path down the rockface, for the better view. I was thinking out of shape but he, politely perhaps, noted my sandals. Because of the earlier unexpected delay, and because Syl was on his way to Nelson, we decided to push on, to keep going. Then another bit of road construction, another twenty minute holdup. When we saw the Greenwood Inn billboard on the outskirts of Grand Forks, well, it seemed like a sign.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.

Another whisper? The sun is streaming in, lighting the bed, heating the room, teasing my eyelids, still heavy from the road, my fingers still curled from gripping the steering wheel. The Hope-Princeton Highway. Note: new name suggestion. The Hope-You-Don’t-Die Way. Sort of the Canadian version of Montana’s Going-to-the-Sun Road. Less optimistic. Somewhat less aspiring. More user-friendly. Less likely to be blocked by avalanches at this time of the year. Avalanche Zone. Refrain from honking horns. What about hitting the wall? Sneezing? That’s a mini-explosion. What about throbbing rock music? Vibrations. Not good. Would they be just as risky, as likely to initiate a fall?

Think only positive thoughts, Wyn. Maybe that’s the secret. Maybe that’s Doll’s secret. She’s always so positive. What would Doll say? That Spring sun is closer and warmer, and here in the Interior, we’re higher already. The osier bushes are surging scarlet. Note to Dylan Thomas: here the force through the green fuse pumps blood red. Last year’s grass is golden. Canadian alchemy. There is no grey in sight. Transmutation hovers like the mist above the falls, changing dead to red, carmine and hunter green.

No need, Wyn, to curse the sun, like Donne, or curse the birds for singing it up. It is just the strangeness of the situation, of an unfamiliar bed. Waking into sunshine. Floating on a sunbeam. In a warm room, with a warm body beside me.

I turn back towards the sunlight. Look up, way up. And there he is, high up in the corner of the room, sitting as if on his own invisible swing, comfortable, with his ankles crossed, and a huge smile on his face. Teetering as if he is getting ready to jump. I’ve never been one who believes in fairies or the little people, even when everyone around me did. So why am I the one to see him? Gnome-like in size, with a bearded face, but without the seven-dwarfs jacket and pants. Without pants completely. Naked, but hairy, like woolly chaps on his thighs. With little curved horns on his head, like the devil card in the Tarot, but green. All green. Not even forest green, which you might expect, if you were that literal, in a place named the Greenwood Inn. Nor an emerald isle green, for March.

He is still there. A bright luna-moth green, the colour of a jadeite-green depression glass lampshade, with fire emanating through it. His horns and forehead and tiny penis are glowing white hot. My little green man. Laughing at me.

I jump, a reflex, my whole body convulsing. Startled. Scared. And that makes him laugh even more. Not laugh, I guess, because I hear no sound. It just makes him grin wider. And of course, my start has jiggled the warm body beside me, and has broken the spell completely.

"Sonez les matines. Sonez les matines."

It is closer to a hum than a whisper, but now it is obvious that the sound is coming from outside my head. Warm breath teases my nipple. I fall with a thud from my sunbeam on to a lumpy mattress which now seems crowded and small.

What’s wrong? Did I wake you? It is a groggy grating voice, like one who has smoked for too many years. Tom Waits-ish, with an accent.

Sorry, did I wake you? Back at you. I’m still fuzzy, between worlds.

"Non, I wasn’t really asleep, the voice rasps. Just lying here. Waiting to see those beautiful eyes again. Enjoying the view."

View? All I can see is sunlight.

Sunshine on my shoulder—

Very good, but these aren’t the Rocky Mountains.

"Non? What then? Not the Coast Mountains?"

No. Not the Coast either. Cascades? Not sure. Maybe the Monashees. Or Okanagan Range of Cascades. I don’t know. You’ll have to ask tourist information.

"Mais non. Je ne suis pas un touriste. I work here."

"Just don’t tell, and you’ll pass, for a tourist. They see many Quebecois. Canadiens errants, wandering, migrant. You’re like the troubadours of old, with your guitar."

"Oui, un Quebecois errant. I am learning the English songs. You like me to sing for you? Make a song for you? How you say, lul-la-by?"

No, I’m awake now. Thanks anyway. I’m ready to get going. A fast shower. Don’t let me keep you. I can tell you really need a cigarette, and this is a non-smoking room.

"I can wait, cherie. We are in no rush, are we? You do not have to be somewhere at any certain hour, do you? He has jumped into his jeans and shoved bare feet into unlaced boots. I go. We can just enjoy un beau matin. Free continental breakfast, the sign says. For sure, everyone wants to be Francais, ou la la. He mimes a limp wrist and a booty wag. I’ll go get a—panier? How do you say un plateau de service?"

A tray?

"Oui, a tray. What would you like me to bring back?"

"Oh, that’s sweet. Le petit dejeuner. Break fast. What did you say your name is again, garçon?"

Sylvain just smiles. "Que voulez-vous?"

"Tea, please. I’m driving. And anything that smells of cinnamon. Surprise me, s’il vous plait."

Chapter 3

DOLL’S HOUSE—HANDS ON

What am I to do? She asked me that one morning that first summer after she moved here, after she left Bruce. What am I to do, Doll? She was looking at her hands as if she expected them to answer. She’d been sending out resumes and knocking on doors and e-mailing friends, asking whether anyone was hiring. It was shameful for her, having to admit that she needed the money, that her dream of living by her wits, meaning by her art, just wasn’t going to happen. She had no bites, she said, no interviews. Not even any acknowledgement that her applications had been received. As if all her e-messages disappeared into some sort of electronic black hole. That was what clinched it. She knew she couldn’t stay here. She had to move into Vancouver. At least in the city she could do private lessons. Tutor English, if necessary. Although she preferred giving private art lessons. Guest talks at clubs and such. Enough to pay the rent and still have time to do her own thing. Her art, you know. She calls it her work.

Yes, she kept her house here. It’s a cabin really. A lot of these older places used to be summer cottages. After they were work camps, from when they logged the Skagit Valley. She comes out on weekends when she can. Howard and I keep an eye on it for her. Funny you should ask about her, be looking for her, today. I was half expecting to see her. At least for a quick coffee. She’s supposed to be going up to their old house, up in the mountains. Almost to the Alberta border. It’s a long drive. And she’s only going because she has to. I asked her to stop to visit en route. She did say she couldn’t promise. I haven’t seen her today. She hasn’t called.

Well, you know Wyn. You know the way she is. Oh, I’m sorry, Mr Kelly. I thought you said you and she were friends? Well then, you’ll understand, after I tell you this. A few weeks back, my phone rang. Help. I’m at the corner of Third and Fourth! Even before she started to laugh, I recognized her voice. She was walking a new route over from the rec centre, through part of the Old Town she wasn’t familiar with, and she had come to that angled intersection where third avenue runs into fourth avenue.

Winnie, I says to her. That’s what we always called her, though now she prefers Wyn. Winnie, I says, it’s just a blip of history. I wasn’t sure whether she was serious. Follow Fourth towards downtown, I says. She was on my doorstep in five minutes. A vestige of the old railroad, I assured her, still not quite clear why this bit of untidiness upset her. The streets angled and tri-angled where they met and crossed the tracks. So, where the tracks used to be, the streets seem to be a-kilter. Akimbo. Whatever. If you draw a line linking the two bridges, you can see what I mean.

TMI, Doll. That’s what she says to me. It’s her phrase for when I meander. Maybe I do talk too much, when there are adults around to talk to. But I know she was interested. The geometry of history, she called it, acute and obtuse. I never thought there might be anything wrong. She was just lost for a moment, and she called me, because she thought the sign was funny. Streets are supposed to run parallel, Doll. You can tell, we both grew up on the prairies, where every corner is a right angle. And sometimes she thinks she has to explain things to me. Explain obvious things. Well, I don’t mind. Parallel lines only meet in perspective, she says, where the horse runs into the train.

But here I am keeping you standing at the door, Mr Kelly. Come in. Come in.

Kelly. That’s a good Irish name. Come in. My new kitchen. Let me make you a cup of tea. You need a break from the highway. Come in.

Oh, no sir. She was just joking. You know Wyn. How did you say you know her? Oh, you know Bruce. Bruce Almighty. Friend of his, are you, Mr Kelly? Wyn doesn’t know you’re looking for her? How did you find me, then, if you don’t mind my asking?

Yes, that sounds like him. I was never his biggest fan, you know, but he and Howard got along all right. Howard. That’s my husband. I guess you figured that out, didn’t you? Howard and Dolores. But everyone calls me Doll. Wyn was my friend. Their breakup hit her pretty hard. Well, I guess divorce always feels like a failure, no matter what the facts. I took her side. I knew how she was hurting. And she moved here to begin with because we lived here. At least she had someone. You know, her mother being dead and all.

What am I to do with my hands? Wyn would say that, when she first got here. I was reaching for the hand lotion and she would hold them up like a model on the shopping channel, minus the rings and bracelets. But she didn’t mean her hands, literally. She meant, how was she going to support herself. Not like she hadn’t, before I mean. Before they were married. Before she lost the baby. But she had never gone back to teaching. Couldn’t face their little cherub cheeks, I’m sure that’s what it was. And now, the new faces behind the doors she was knocking on, those doors that weren’t opening for her, were all young and glamorous, or IT-trained. For sure, it’s not easy being an artist. Not if you want to eat anyway.

What did she do, you ask. Well, she did