Lily Fairchild

By Don Gutteridge

Lily Fairchild is a novel about a remarkable woman, born in the backwoods of Lambton County, Ontario in 1840. Lily’s struggle to survive and grow and discover her place in the scheme of things is complicated not only by the ordinary travail of pioneer living but by the impact of historical events themselves: the railroads and their cutthroat competition, the Riel Rebellions, the First World War and the influenza pandemic of 1918. During her long life Lily witnesses the birth of a nation and the founding and rise of her home village of Point Edward. Lily Fairchild is part history and part fable, replete with historical personages and a bizarre gallery of local characters. It is ultimately a story of survival and loss, about aging and the changes it brings, and about the role of memory itself.

Don Gutteridge is the author of seventy books: poetry, fiction and scholarly works in pedagogical theory and practice. He has published thirty-seven books of poetry and twenty-two novels, including the twelve-volume Marc Edwards mysteries. He is currently Professor Emeritus, the Faculty of Education, Western University. He lives in London, Ontario.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: Jul 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781925993714

Don Gutteridge

Don Gutteridge is the author of forty books: fiction, poetry and scholarly works. He taught high school for seven years and then joined the Faculty of Education at Western University in the Department of English Methods. He is now professor emeritus and lives in London, Ontario.

Book preview

PART ONE

Lily

1

Moore Township, 1845

Something stirred in the darkness ahead. It made no sound, but it was present and alive. For as long as she could remember, she knew. The breath from a fawn’s cough could tease her skin – like this ripple of shaded wind against her cheek – long before her ear caught the sound and identified it.

Lily was glad to be in the comfort of the trees’ canopy. It was cozy here, like the cabin with Papa’s fire blazing, when Mama was not in her bed. Lily wasn’t afraid of the dark, though Mama sometimes shivered fearfully at night, especially those nights when Papa had gone off and Lily was beckoned to press her child’s body against her mother’s clenched form. She dreamt she was a moth spinning a warm cocoon around them both, full of charms to drive the uncertainty from Mama’s eyes. While outside, heard only by her, the snow sang to the wind and no one in the world was lonely.

It was never lonesome in the bush. Here living things emerged and endured in the dappled undergrowth – ferns and worts and fungi and mosses, and, in the few random spots freckled by sun, surprised violets. Lily could sense the creatures’ presence even as she took short quick steps towards the back bush, a place forbidden by Mama. She stopped to acknowledge them: a thrush untangled his song; a snakeskin combed the grass; a deermouse scuttled and froze.

You stay away from the Indians, you hear? Mama said so often. She seemed to hate them: they never did a lick of work; they drank whiskey, then went crazy and hurt people; they went hunting god-knows-where, taking good men with them, so the farms were neglected. And their women, they’re wicked too, and dance and do bad things…. Lily wanted to ask, not about the bad things, but about the dancing, though she never did.

Lily knew where the Indians lived. Many nights, curled in the straw of her loft, she heard the drumbeats come across the tree-tops from miles away and settle into their clearing as if aimed there. They were not like her soft heartbeat, nor like the sprightly songs Mama sang at her spinning wheel. Theirs was a pounding, repetitive music that set her heart ajar, that made her long to know what words could be sung to such a rhythm, what dances would find their feet in such a frenzy. She wanted to see those women, how they moved in the firelight that twisted above the black roof of the bush, what their eyes said when they danced in the smoky, burnished, mosquito-riven dark.

An axe rang against a tree-trunk, clear as a church bell. Papa’s back. Lily recognized the signature of his chopping: two vicious slashes, the second slightly more terrifying than the first, followed by two diminished, tentative chunks. Maybe Mama would hear them too and leave her sick bed. Papa was in the North Field; that was good. He’d only gone off as far as the Frenchman’s. Sometimes one of the LaRouche boys came back with him to help with the stumps or the burning. All three boys watched her with the edges of their eyes until Papa shouted at her to go away.

Papa had returned and that was enough to deter her from the bush and the forbidden terrain beyond the East Field, carefully planted now with wheat. She turned towards the North Field, five acres of newly cleared and fire-ravaged land where the Indians were not allowed to camp or hunt. Papa might be in a good mood. She listened carefully to the determined repetition of Papa’s axe against the grained flesh of the tree. He was at one of the hardwoods again. Abruptly the axe fell silent. Lily held her breath. Then she heard the thunderous, sustained shriek as a two-hundred-year-old walnut came crashing through the forest to stun the ground with its sudden goodbye. She paused and listened to the tree’s dying reverberate through the earth.

She would surprise Papa at his work, celebrate another tree felled, and laugh when he swept her up and twirled her around, saying . Lady Fair Child, may I have the pleasure of this dance?

2

Mama was in her bed again. Yesterday she had smiled at Lily and proposed they venture out to pick some raspberries for a pie. But they were too late for the berries, shriveled weeks before, and Mama had one of her coughing spells before they were back at the cabin. Papa as usual took some day-old soup in to her. Lily listened, as she always did, to catch the slightest hint of conversation between them. There was none, though Papa stayed a long while, until the haze of evening settled like a moss along the sills and Mama’s breathing became regular, heavy with exhaustion.

This morning he left again. Gotta have meat for that soup, he used to say to Lily, taking down his gun and putting on the buckskin he’d gotten from Old Samuels, the blind Indian who was an exception to Mama’s suspicions. Lately Papa simply departed without a word. Probably, Mama said, her voice shaking with effort, with that Acorn fellow. Acorn, Metagomin, was one of Old Samuels’ nephews; the other was Pwau-na-shigor Sounder.

But Lily was a help now; she was all of seven. If Papa set the pot on the irons and started the fire, she could cut up the turnips and toss them in, and stir the soup until its tiny rabbit bones surrendered their meat. There was a stone oven at one side of the fireplace; Lily would take the sourdough prepared by Madame LaRouche, and follow her instructions to make bread for Papa’s supper. Next spring Papa was going to get them a pig. Already he’d built a pen for it against the east wall.

Plenty pigs in the bush, Old Samuels would chortle. Only White Mens builds him a house and grows him food. Then he would shake his head in mock bewilderment at the folly of his white neighbours. Nonetheless, he would wait with the patience of his seventy-odd years till Lily or Papa reached into the pot and offered a respectfully large morsel. Sometimes Lily would be working over the fire, humming one of Mama’s songs, and when she turned, Old Samuels would be no more than five feet behind her, the black pennies where his eyes should have been giving nothing away. You gonna be a good cook, like the Frenchman’s woman.

Mama didn’t like Old Samuels’ habit of entering their cabin without announcing his arrival. Occasionally he would stay all day, sitting on his knees to the left of the fire where he could detect any cool draft from the curtained doorway, saying nothing. Sometimes he would talk to Lily, raising his thin voice just enough to include Mama, willing or no, in the one-way conversation. Old Samuels told long stories, most of which began, Wasn’t like that here in the olden days and ending with, and that’s the truth, and I know ’cause I seen it, I seen it before these eyes of mine withered up. When Papa made the slightest demurral, he’d say, Blind men don’t lie.

Before the White Mens come, this was a magic place, he would tell them. The gods of the Mohawk and the gods of the Huron fought their great battles here among the spirits of my own people, the Attawandaron. In them days, the bears were as big as hickory trees. Pause for the power of that image to take root. When the foreign gods left, they took all of the Hurons and most of my brothers with them. But the souls of my ancestors stayed right here where they been for a thousand generations. Attawandaron don’t run; they hang round, like Old Samuels and Sounder and Acorn. Even when them Ojibwa sells this land they don’t own to the White Mens, Old Samuels just laugh. And smoke his pipe – with White Mens’ tobacco stolen from our gods who gave it as a gift to all men.

He’s got the manners of a ghost, Mama often said, but not once did she ask him to leave.

How does he get here if he can’t see? Lily asked Papa.

He’s lived here so long he knows every bush and beetle in the territory, Papa said. And it seemed to be true, as Lily would watch him enter their property at the far corner of the East Field just past the Brown Creek, the stream that flowed, they said, all the way to the Indian camp in the back bush, and then thread his way through the maze of stumps and ash-heaps, never once stepping on the haphazard swirls of wheat between.

Redmen smells his way in the bush, he told Lily. Don’t need eyes. Redmen sniffs the air currents like the white-tail. He demonstrated. Raspberry jam, he announced, from the Frenchman’s woman.

Yes, said Lily, duly amazed.

Last week, though, after LaRouche and his three eldest sons, Luc, Jean-Pierre and Anatole, had finished piling and burning the last log in the North Field, and after some firewater had been consumed by all, Lily saw Old Samuels weave his way towards the back bush, teetering and righting himself as he went. At the corner of the East Field, he paused. The sounds of the men parting in the other direction diminished and died. Old Samuels appeared to look towards the east. Then a small brown boy slipped from the bush and touched Old Samuels’ hand. He shook it off. The boy turned, and Old Samuels followed, exactly two paces behind until the woods reclaimed them.

Your Papa’s got a nose for the wind, he said whenever Papa went off with Acorn or Sounder. Hunting’s no good here now. Not like the olden days. They go all the way to Chatham, I guess, to find the bucks this time of year.

Lily wanted to know more about Chatham but Mama began coughing in her bed and Lily rose to attend to her. By the time she returned, Old Samuels had lit up his pipe, stuffed with aromatic tobacco. When he got to smoking, he didn’t talk.

Lily may not have known much about Chatham or any other nearby town – Port Sarnia, Sandwich, or London – but she had travelled some miles into the bush with Papa when he trapped in the winter. She had seen the other farms along the line north of them. She could read the trail-marking blazes on the trees and find the faint paths through the bush that would open suddenly upon sun-lit beaver meadows, some of them as wide as the East Field. Beyond the Millars’ farm she had seen the crude road that was said to meander all the way to Port Sarnia, and from there to London, immeasurable miles to the east. She knew too that a great river swept by them no more than half-a-day’s walk from their own doorstep. Someday Papa would show it to her.

Lily was not prepared for the Frenchman’s farm, the home of LaRouche, his wife, and their brood of children. The usual procedure for a homesteader in the new territory was to clear room for a cabin near the front line of the property, then proceed in a systematic fashion to open up fields to the north, east and south. When at last Lily was allowed to accompany Anatole back to his place to fetch some garden greens for Mama, she was surprised to find their house set near the centre of several haphazard plots of no particular shape. Several nut trees had been left standing amidst the fledgling wheat and undisciplined vegetable garden. All trees were to be cut down: that was the unspoken code here, one of the necessities that drove the homesteaders to the mutual service and support they required to survive.

LaRouche’s cabin had begun life as a log structure of typical rectangular design, but time, weather, and exigency had added their influences to the original. Rooms of planks and split logs, packed with mortar and straw, jutted, sagged, or lay half-built where the Frenchman’s imagination or optimism had failed him. No windows looked in or out. Against the east wall, a lean-to of sorts had been erected wherein the ox-team of Bessie and Bert found comfort at day’s end among the resident pigs and visiting barred rocks.

Much of the cooking and indeed family life took place outside the murky interior of the homestead. Using the trade he had abandoned for farming after the war against the States, LaRouche built a fine stone oven-and-fireplace protected from the rain by a canvas affair of army tenting, deer-hides and one old sail salvaged, according to its owner, from the Battle of Put-In Bay. Here Madame LaRouche – referred to as Maman by her brood of eleven and as Fluffy by her husband in undisguised admiration for her three hundred pounds of flesh, sturdiness and good health – presided over hearth and oven with a temper that alternated between wheezing cheeriness and tongue-biting pique.

Lily could not take her eyes off Maman. She watched in awe as the woman punched and tormented the sourdough as if she were beating the belly of an obdurate husband, her heavy bosom rolling beneath the homespun smock she wore night and day. Lily shuddered whenever Maman’s hand shot out to stun the cheek of a child who ventured too close or dared too much. Later, she would see that same youngster comfortably housed in Maman’s lap, drifting into secure sleep.

In return for offerings from Papa’s hunting expeditions, Madame LaRouche provided welcome staples during the times when Mama was in bed: preserves, jams, greens from her garden in season, salt-port and bully beef from the venison Papa brought home. While the Frenchman himself did not hunt, having given up guns and wars following his service, he usually went along on the shorter excursions to supply encouragement, advice, and refreshments from his still in the bush. The older boys did not share their father’s pacifism.

When her own mother slept or rested, Lily was left to spend hours with Maman and her youngest children, all boys except for Madeleine who was just six. Maman happily schooled Lily in cooking and sewing, all of which Lily had a talent for, though not as much persistence and application as Maman would have hoped. But then Lily was not French, Maman teased. She sang while she baked – wistful melodies in her Norman tongue that seemed all the more serene because they sailed out of such an unnavigable source. Although Maman did not tell conventional stories, she had opinions on everyone and everything.

Those Millars, she said with the hushed stridency reserved for such remarks, they’re gonna be trouble, wait and see. Scotch, the both of ’em. Give me the Irish any day, even your kind.

An’ you keep away from that Ol’ Sams, she said in a more sinister tone. That carrot of his may be shrivelled up but it’s still got juice in the root. You mind them hands too, little chickadee; believe-you-me, Maman knows all about them kind of paws.

Lily of course paid little serious heed to any of this, but she smiled and nodded and did all she could to encourage Maman’s chatter. A pretty, fair thing like you oughta get away from this place as soon as you can. That’s Maman’s advice. Go to the city. Go to Chatham or Sandwich. They’re real nice places. Lots of people.

Then Maman would launch on a description of her brief but dazzling courtship with Corporal LaRouche of Malden, of the clapboard house they’d lived in, the dances they attended, the clothes they wore, the times they had before the Yankees came and the world collapsed. I said to Gaston, I’ll go with you to the bush, I’ll have your babies, I’ll clean your house, but I’m not about to die out there without a priest at my side, prayin’ in my ear and rubbin’ my head with holy oil an’ smoothin’ my slide into Heaven.

Lily swallowed her gooseberry tart.

I told him I don’t care if he has to hop to Sandwich on one snowshoe in a blizzard – a promise is a promise. Maman surprised the pastry dough with a punch to the gut.

What’s a priest? Lily ventured, at last.

A priest, it turned out, was a kind of preacher. Papa didn’t like preachers. Once, last summer, when Lily had been hoeing on her own in the garden near the line, she heard the crack of a twig along the path to the LaRouches’. She looked up in time to see a large florid man dressed all in black, still panting from the exertion of his trek through the bush. His blue eyes bounced like agates in his puffed face before they came to rest on the rims of his cheeks. His smile was as broad as his belly.

Good afternoon, little elf, his voice boomed. I am a man of God. I’ve come all the way from London. Just to see you.

Lily stared.

Do you know who God is, little one?

No response.

Would you kindly tell your pa that the Methodist man is here.

Lily did not have to tell Papa. He had heard, even in the North Field, and had come striding past the cabin towards them. Lily knew enough to leave. She heard Papa’s voice raised the way it was when he cursed Bert and Bessie or the trunk of a stubborn ironwood. His axe flashed in the sun. The preacher was already scuttling like a duck into the safety of the Lord’s bush.

Lily wanted to ask Papa who God was; Mama tried to tell her.

Sometimes, after being in her bed for several days, when some colour had come back into her cheeks, Mama would reach under the bed and pull out the large, dark book she called the Bible. Lily watched, poised and alert, as Mama’s fingers made the pages, thin as bee’s wings, flutter and settle.

These are the words God gave us.

Read me some of them, Mama.

Not today, my sweet. Mama’s just a bit too tired. Tomorrow.

Promise?

Promise.

Then, seeing the longing in her child’s eyes, she would close the book and in a reedy quaver begin to sing the spinning song,

Hi diddle dum, hi diddle dare-o

Hi diddly iddly, hi diddle air-o

Hi diddle diddly, hi diddle um

At first Lily would hum along, then gradually pick up the tongue-tumbling syllables one at a time, like stitches, giving to them whatever meaning the emotions of the moment allowed.

As sometimes happened, Papa did not return by day’s end. Lily had been able to find enough small logs to keep the fire alive overnight, though it was not banked properly and the cabin became suffocating in the late August heat. She made some tea, warmed up the soup, and went into Mama’s room. Lily held her hand to guide the tin cup to her lips. After a few reluctant sips, Mama closed her eyes.

The morning outside was beautiful and Lily bent to her chores in the garden and yard. High in the pines and arching elms, cicadas soon announced noon. By then, Mama was sitting in the rocker Papa had fashioned for her out of cedar. She gave Lily a wan smile and asked: Would you help Mama with her hair? As her mother watched in wordless encouragement, Lily managed to heat a wide kettle of water and get it foaming with soap. Mama leaned over, her brow resting on the arm of the chair, her long hair reaching almost to the floor. For a moment she seemed to be asleep, but when Lily began to pour the soft warm water over her, letting it fall gently back into the kettle, she murmured and her hand reached out to squeeze Lily’s. How beautiful Mama’s hair was, its former glory regained as she sat back in the rocker and let the afternoon sun scatter praise where it could. Lily took her mother’s bone-brush and stroked and stroked. A while later she said, Let’s have tea, little one.

Lily, excited, brought out the china pot and two tiny cups with matching blue saucers. She stirred the slumbering fire and prepared the tea just as she remembered Mama doing, then fetched the last of the blueberry cakes Maman LaRouche had given them. Mama began to speak softly, but insistently. The place we come from, your Papa and me, is a long ways across the biggest ocean in the world. We were married there. We were very happy. But it wasn’t a happy land. The priests and the preachers didn’t get along. The crops failed, many times. We were hungry. Papa decided we should leave. You were already tucked inside my belly. We went on a sailing ship three times bigger than this house. Everything we owned was packed into two trunks they put in the hold.

The odour of hot ash hung in the air outside the cabin and in the room itself, blue-bottles buzzed, unappeased.

I figured we’d die on that ship, but we didn’t. We made it because we loved one another, we wanted happiness or death. At Quebec Papa bought tools and we got onto another ship, a smaller one, and sailed along the big lake just south of here. There a storm struck us down. The ship came apart in the waves near the long point. Dozens of people drowned. Papa and me were in the only boat that got to shore. We lost everything but our lives.

The room darkened steeply, the sun eclipsed by the high horizon of the trees. Lily carefully unwound Mama’s fingers from the tea-cup, hearing her shallow breathing. How Lily wished that Old Samuels would arrive just now, slip in unnoticed, and be in the mood to tell a long story. Mama could just rock there and listen.

But Old Samuels did not come. The dusk of early evening drifted in, adhered. Lily decided to let the fire go out; the air was already too warm. Leaving her mother asleep in the chair, she started up the ladder to the loft.

Don’t go up, Lily. Sleep with Mama tonight.

Eagerly, Lily scrambled back down and then helped Mama towards her curtained cubicle. Her arms were thin as willow, the flesh draped over the bones. Lily slipped out of her cotton dress and under the sheet.

Open this, please, Mama said. In her hand was a small box made of in-laid woods. It was the most beautiful object Lily had ever seen. With her nimble fingers she tripped the slim gold latch and the lid lifted. Mama brought out a cameo pendant with a silver chain that shimmered in the gloaming. Fortuitously the last log in the fire burst into brief flame, and Lily was able to see that there was, beneath the cameo’s glaze, the merest sketch of a woman’s head: two or three quick but telling strokes. With a start, Lily recognized her own eyes.

Your grandmother.

Mama’s eyes filled with tears. She reached into the box again. I saved this, out of the storm. She held up a gold chain on the end of which dangled a slender cross no more than half an inch long. Instinctively Lily leaned forward and the crucifix settled on her throat as if it had always expected to be there. Then Mama fell back against her pillow. She crooked her left arm and Lily, as she had seen Maman LaRouche’s little ones do so often, slid into the embrace and held herself there as if the world would end if she blinked.

Lily had left the bed curtain open. In the dark, the embers of the fire glowed, then succumbed without a murmur. The night-air, remembering that it was almost September, turned as chill and sharp as the sabre-shaped moon guiding it. When Lily woke, the sun was already above the tree-line, sifting through the east window. She had been kept warm through the night by the final, fierce heat of her mother’s will. Beside her now, that flesh lay as cold as the ice that clenched the streams of mid-winter.

3

Maman LaRouche sent everyone out of the house while she dressed Mama’s body. Papa, Gaston LaRouche, and Luc had sat in the lean-to shed sipping from a jug, murmuring occasionally in low voices, but mostly staring straight ahead into the bush. Once Lily thought she heard her mother’s name spoken–Kathleen– like an exhalation of breath, but she wasn’t sure. They put Mama’s body, carefully wrapped in a white sheet of the softest cotton from Maman’s cedar chest, in the ground on a slight knoll where the East Field joined the North. Jean-Pierre and Anatole had dug the hole.

Old Samuels came to the grave with his nephews, Sounder and Acorn; to Lily’s astonishment, a tribe of wives and children followed behind them with heads down, though still resplendent in their furs and black-and white featherage. The Millars and the two new families from the North section arrived. Lily had never before seen so many people gathered in one place. She held Papa’s hand tightly, and he squeezed back, almost hurting. Her heart reared through its sadness. Mr. Millar stepped forward, opened a black book, and read some words from it that the wind caught with ease and almost carried off. Maman LaRouche suddenly burst into sobs which she made no effort to staunch, fully drowning his eulogy. Lily understood even then that Maman was weeping for them all.

Old Samuels began to hum from somewhere deep in his body, letting the music of it find its own course and pace. The gravesite became quiet; the wind fell. His lamentation found syllables and sounds that might have been words, though no one present had ever heard the language they made. His blank eyes, like death’s pennies, began to flutter in time with the rising and falling cadences of his song. He turned his ancient face upward, and his whole frame tensed, expectant, as if he had been asking some question over and over. He looked towards Papa and Lily. He smiled as only a man without eyes can smile, with every other feature of his face. In English he said: The gods are listening; that is all we can ask.

Many times during the long winter following, when Papa was away trapping or hunting, Lily asked Maman who God was, thinking of Mama lying unattended in that cold grave under the snow. But Maman used the question to launch into another rant about priests and the promises of faithless husbands. Papa, who was always too tired to talk after his excursions, would just grunt in a dismissive tone, Go ask Millar, he knows all about those things. Then he would go silent or out the door.

Off to Chatham, Old Samuels would shake his head sadly. Plenty bad people in Chatham, for sure. Or when Papa sometimes pointedly picked up his gun, leather pouches and haversack, and said to Lily, Better tell them lady deer to stay back in the bush, darlin’, your Papa’s comin’, Old Samuels would whisper after him, "Your Papa’s gone to Chatham to hunt bucks," and chortle.

On the subject of God, though, Old Samuels was eager and loquacious. White Mens has the silliest ideas about the gods. It takes us Indians a day to stop laughin’ when we hear about it. First they say there’s only one god. If that’s true then the white god must fight with himself. Anybody with ears and eyes ‒ he’d always pause here for a tiny ironic smile ‒knows about the god in the thundercloud whose voice speaks blackly to the quiet gods in the lake and the summer creeks. And the god of the gentle winds has no love for the god of the blizzard that tears the trees in half and buries the earth. Anybody knows there’s the good gods and the wicked gods, the guardian spirits and the demons. We must listen to the good gods to keep them on our side: they will help those who listen for them. Remember that, little one. But we must also help the gods. Sometimes the demons are too strong and the good gods go into hiding. That is a sad time for the world.

What about heaven? Lily asked, remembering Maman’s assurance that her mother dwelled there.

Your Mama, who was the dearest White Womens in this world, is not in heaven, little one. That Millar, he tells me heaven is a pretty house with beads and ornaments on it, up over the moon and the stars. That is silliness. The good gods would not build their house up there; they live here in the green world and in the stars themselves. Your Mama’s body is under the earth, but the guardian gods have taken her spirit with them. Wherever they are, she will be also. If your eyes and ears are listening to the good gods, you will hear her voice among theirs. In that way she will always be near you.

How do you know the good gods will speak to me?

Ah, that is easy. Because you sing their song, and you dance, and you are happy even when you’re sad. And you make Old Samuels happy.

I can’t dance, said Lily.

Old Samuels paused to light his pipe. Lily thought he was finished talking for the day. But you can. I hear dancing in your voice every day.

Lily did not like to be teased. For a while she sulked and avoided Old Samuels. She waited in the woods by the gravesite for a demon to whisper something outrageous to her. The old man took no notice. He stayed his usual time and without saying goodbye made his way across the field towards his great-nephew at the edge of the bush.

One night, alone in her loft, Lil woke to the harvest moon igniting the straw at her feet. She caught herself humming:

Hi diddle dum, hi diddle dare-o

Hi diddly iddly, hi diddle air-o

Hi diddle diddly, hi diddle um

Soon she felt the presence of a second part in flawless harmony with her own. She stopped. Her mother’s voice continued, as clear and crystal as the moon’s.

Lily was often alone, and had been as long as she could remember, even when Mama was alive. She was not lonely though. She could sit close by her father for hours while he chopped wood or repaired tools without the need to speak. Often she hummed, sang songs or made them up as she watched whatever scenes were played out before her. By herself in the fields she would lie on her back and dream the clouds into shapes of her wishing, or follow, minute by minute, the extravagant exit of the sun as it boiled and dissolved or tossed itself on the antlered tree-line and gave up its its blood in sunset. The few acres that defined her world pulsated with sights, sounds, smells, with the dramas of birth, struggle and demise. And now there were the guardians and the demons to listen for, the good gods in their hiding to be heeded and helped.

This bush don’t go on forever, Old Samuels said that spring, sensing restlessness in the girl. Half a day’s walk towards the sunset and you’ll come to the River of Light that’s been flowin’ there since the last time the wild gods stirred the earth and created it over again. Two days walk towards the North Star where that river begins and there’s the Freshwater Sea of the Hurons, bigger than the lakes on the moon. Lily had been dreaming of water ever since the first snow had widened the woods in October. In the midst of the bush, beyond the last blazed trail, she would suddenly imagine before her a stretch of blue, unrippled water, without edges or end, clear as cadmium. Then a crow would caw and the snow-bound trees pop back into view. In the early spring the bubbling of Brown Creek below the East Field would unexpectedly become magnified in her mind as if it were a torrent ripping out the throat of a narrows, roaring until Lily stopped her ears, fearing that she had somehow transgressed, that the demons had indeed inherited part of the earth.

You’re like Old Samuels, little one. Sometimes you know.

I’ll ask the guardians to bring back your eyes, Lily said.

So I can see all the wickedness and foolishness again? It’s not like olden times any more. Two days walk south of here and they say you’ll come to roads chopped through the bush, and White Mens drives his wagons on roads made of dead trees, and Chatham is bigger than ten Ojibwa villages

Why does Papa go to Chatham?

"I like your Papa. He’s a good White Mens. I tell him my name is Uhessemau, but he says ‘I can’t say that so I’ll just call you Old Samuels.’ I like the name Old Samuels, so I keep it. Redmen don’t fuss about names; we have many names before we die. If I die with Old Samuels, well that’s okay with me." The old man puffed on his pipe, but he didn’t answer Lily’s question.

One evening Papa returned at dusk, his haversack full of store-bought bacon and sausages. The fresh provisions were not for storing though. Start packin,’ Lily. We’re goin’ up to Port Sarnia to watch the ceremonies.

It was Indian summer. The leaves had turned but not fallen. No wind disturbed their glow in a sun that blazed with more hope than heat. Along the forest track, purged of summer’s mosquitoes, autumnal shadows stretched and stilled. Air in the lungs was claret, bracing. Papa measured his practiced stride to hers, and she floated gratefully in his wake.

They had left home while the sun was still a promise in the east, following the line that linked the four farms to the north. Lily had never been north of Millars’ farm, never seen the River. The beaten path, so familiar to their feet, soon disappeared. There was just enough light to see the blazes, newly slashed, that marked the bush-trail ahead. They were going north, through nowhere to somewhere, at last.

Just as the sun bested the tree-line far to their right, they were joined by Acorn and Sounder. The young men slipped behind Lily without a word. Only when they stopped much later for a drink from a shallow spring and a brief rest did she notice that they were not in hunting attire. Their red and blue sashes against the white calico of their capotswere dazzling, even amongst the maples and elms. Like Papa they carried haversacks stuffed with supplies. Sounder, as usual, grinned broadly at Lily, giving her a glimpse of the merriment that must have once quickened the eyes of Old Samuel himself. Acorn, according to his custom, nodded at her impassively, with no change of expression. Lily stared at the grimace of the black squirrel peering out of the fur on Acorn’s shoulder.

To Papa they spoke in Pottawatomie, the language their parents had adopted when, according to Old Samuels, to utter a word in Attawandaron or Petun meant death. There was no one alive now who remembered those sweet, sharp sounds. Lily thought sadly of her mother’s forgotten lullaby tongue. While they rested, Sounder chattered away to Papa like a jay. Already Lily could pick out some words; the pitch of rising excitement was plain. She detected presents,white soldier, big river and village. Papa replied laconically, half listening as he did with Lily. But he was happy. His large hands cradled the back of his head, his eyes glowed with something remembered and anticipated. Lily found herself beside him and put her hand on his knee.

Sounder switched to English. Little-maiden-with-the-goldenrod-hair is a brave walker, no?

The ghost of a hand bent over hers…

Big white general only give presents to womans with black hair. White generals plenty fussy ’bout presents.

…brushed and settled.

Sounder like all womans; give presents to everybody. His eyes danced at the thought. Even Acorn, he laughed, and did a little jig around his unimpressed cousin. Ready to move? Papa asked, in Acorn’s direction.

Sometime after noon, they turned north-west, still following the blazed trail. To the west lay the River. Lily strained to hear its voice. The odd crow, unmated, cawed in complaint; a bear crumpled the dry brush nearby, seeking the late berries; a crab-apple dropped its sour fruit. Increasingly they passed through large natural clearings, beaver meadows or sandy patches where the hundred-foot oaks and pines had given way to clans of cherry, snow-apple, and sumac.

Mostly, though, they heard their own footfalls. Sounder, impatient with Papa’s considered pace, scooted off into the semi-dark and popped up in front of them with a red squirrel in his hand, kicking out the last of its life.

For supper, he explained, setting off again, guided by his own compass.

They came not to the River but to a well-established road, a fifteen-foot swath cut through the bush, the stumps pulled and the surface smoothed over with sand. Across the myriad streams trickling west towards the River, bridges of demi-logs had been crudely constructed. Lily realized that a horse and cart could travel here, though no vehicle approached them. They followed the road due north until the sun began to tilt sharply to their left. It will sink soon, right into the River, Lily thought.

Are we near the water? she asked, no longer able to contain her curiosity. How she wished she were Sounder, able to dance ahead and explore unfettered. Papa increased his pace; Acorn muttered his disapproval. After a while Sounder said quietly to Lily: River of Light is just through the trees there. We been following it, but no path, even for a brave walker. Lily looked longingly to her left but saw only the black silhouettes of trees, fluted by the sun behind them. Her disappointment was interrupted by Sounder’s cry, Here’s the farms!

Before them was an immense expanse of open space unimpeded by trees. To the east of the road the bush had been denuded of all timber, all brush, in typical pioneer fashion, Not even a windbreak separated one farm from another. The stumps of the slain trees had been piled lengthwise to create makeshift fences, demarcating properties, fields, gardens, and dooryards. At first such angularity seemed alien to Lily, even painful to look at. But the sight of cabins, several of them larger than any in her settlement and ranged neatly back from the road in neighbourly view of one another, was overwhelming.

The others were apparently impervious to grandeur, for they had moved well ahead and were stopped, waiting for her, in front of the third cabin. The smoke from its fieldstone chimney lingered in welcome in the still air. It was only when Lily joined them that she glanced away from the farms to the west again and discovered that the bush had been cleared for a stretch of two or three hundred yards, all the way down to what could only be the River. This way, Papa commanded, ushering her into the home of the Partridges.

Mrs. Partridge was surprisingly kind. She bathed Lily’s blistered feet in soda water, rubbed them with ewe’s grease, and put into her moccasins little pads of the softest cotton. Store-bought at Cameron’s, she said with restrained pride, up at Port Sarnia. After a meal of quail roasted in a genuine iron stove, potatoes, squash, corn-bread with molasses, tart apple pie and mugs of warm goat’s milk, the men slouched together by the fire, lit up their pipes, and conversed partly in English and partly in Pottawatomie. They were soon joined by two sturdy neighbours with buff red cheeks and flaming hair. Mrs. Partridge and her two elder daughters sat near the stove in the kitchen, one carding wool, the other preparing to full several man-sized macintoshes. Lily had many questions to ask but no words with which to express them. She listened, though, her eye never leaving the printed calico dresses of the elder daughters and the rounded bodies so restless beneath them.

The Partridges had a small shed that served as an outhouse. Lily left the door ajar, allowing the moon to pour its amber warmth through a wedge in the tree-line. She did not return to the cabin right away, instead walking past it and straight across the moon’s carpet. She heard the River just ahead in the darkness behind the beam of light. Strange sand-grasses caressed her bare legs. At last she came to the water’s edge and the voice of the River filled her ears. It roared with a hoarse breath, and in it, Lily thought she detected longing, anticipation, and the ache of seeking what always lay ahead, just out of sight. Under the circling stars, Lily listened for the language it used, but it was no tongue she had ever heard.

Later, from her cot near the board wall that separated the sleeping area from the main room, Lily tried to catch the scattered words of the men.

Them surveyors was through here again last week, Michael.

I heard, said Papa’s voice. Rumours floatin’ about, up an’ down the line. Talk of makin’ this territory a county.

White fella draws lines in the bush, said Sounder, making no attempt to disguise his disdain for the folly of the intruders.

Lily dozed, dreaming of water bigger than counties, borderless and infinitely serene.

Went to the meetin’ down at Chatham. Things is gettin’ worse, we hear tell. Some new law comin’ in over there about returnin’ the poor devils. All legal-like, too.

Sun-in-bitch Yankees, Sounder added.

Over a hundred come across since August. We’re lookin’ for a new route, Harry. Them raiders is gettin’ smarter by the hour. Reckon things could get real bad by summer.

The committee can count on us.

Damn right. None of us forgets what it was like to be a Highlander under George’s boot. What do you want us to do?

Sun-in-bitch English!

Lily was swimming, her hair fanned out like a parasol in a blue river.

Next day they rose and were well on their way before sunrise. But this time Lily knew more about what lay ahead. From various overheard conversations at the Partridges she learned that the village of Port Sarnia sat less than two hours’ walk along River Road to the north, and that one was not to be surprised by periodic farms in lee of the road, though the spread of a dozen at what the locals called Bloomfield was the largest group below the Port itself. Here and there slash-roads were cut eastward through the woods so that one could imagine not merely strips of settlement, but successive waves challenging the hidden heart at the centre of the territory, known only to the natives and the hibernating bears who were said to rule there unmolested. At the end of River Road the bush would relent and they would come to a huge clearing where the river eased into a wide bay, the site of the new town, and behind it to the south and east the Ojibwa, or Chippewa, Reserve where several thousand Indians lived in scattered equanimity. What they were there to witness, what Sounder couldn’t stop dancing about, was the arrival of the government ship for the annual dispersal of gifts given in exchange for land ‒ territory of which the native owners had already been dispossessed.

Just moments before Lily and the others emerged from the bush into the misty dawn-light, the steamer Hastingsweighed anchor and slipped from its overnight mooring in the bay towards the river bank below the town. On board was Major John Richardson, who had joined the official expedition at Windsor on October 9, 1948, and who was carefully recording the events surrounding the gift-giving ceremonies at the Reserves on Walpole Island and at Port Sarnia. The weather was flawless: the sky unscarred by cloud, the sun brilliant as a rubbed coin, the wind at ease in the sea-grasses along the shoreline. As if the whole enterprise had been choreographed, dozens of parties of Indians, large and small, materialized from the forest of their Reserve at various spots along the two-mile curve that formed the natural bend of the bay. Most walked, single file, with the women and children behind. Others, more resplendent, rode the motley ponies bred on the Island.

At some undetectable signal, the Government contingent marched down a single plank to the shore, a sort of colour guard, dazzling in blue, red and white, breaking off and standing crisply at attention while a larger platoon of regulars from the Canadian Rifles wheeled southerly just ahead of the navvies freighted with the Queen’s largesse. At the same moment, five dignified Indians, obviously chiefs, moved towards the colour guard, stopped dead-still, and waited. Major Richardson, wan and aged beyond his years but impeccably turned out, stepped forward with Captain Rooke. While Her Majesty’s gifts, neatly bound in fleece-white blankets tied at the four corners, were being carefully laid out in predetermined rows, White Man and Indian exchanged formal greetings, then sat down at the entrance to a huge skin tent and passed the ceremonial pipe. Major Richardson was seen to talk animatedly in Ojibwa to several of the chiefs whose smiles were all-encompassing. Meanwhile the more than one thousand natives who had now reached the plain began to select their presents. The bundles were not marked in any way, but each individual or group knew, from custom and tradition, which kind of bundle was intended, and deserved. There was no rush, no confusion even though the actions of the several families and tribes appeared to be spontaneous. Bundles were carried off to the edges of the plain where families had set up their cooking apparatus and blankets for the events ahead. Fires sprang up, cards and dice appeared, fresh calico paraded, Cavendish proffered and puffed. The Great White Mother had wafted her attention and grace across the world-sea and blessed them with this day.

Only one element seemed out of place on a morning described later by Richardson as having all of the softness of mellowed autumn. One of the chiefs, a wrinkled and scarred veteran of the Battle of the Thames who had stood beside Tecumseh when the Yankee bullets ruptured the great man’s heart, did not smile, did not sip peace with his brothers, did not take the gifts offered, did not bend his gaze from the badges and brass before him. He was Shaw-wah-wan-noo, the Shawnee or Southener, the only one of his race known to still inhabit these grounds so long after those cataclysmic events. Richardson, at an age when romanticizing is either foolish or profound, wrote in his account that this man, notwithstanding five and thirty years had elapsed since Tecumseh’s fall, during which he had mixed much with the whites, suffered not a word of English to come from his lips. He looked the dignified Indian and the conscious warrior, whom no intercourse with the white man could rob of his native independence of character.

Lily was made dizzy by the colour and the crowds. The Indians’ regalia took two forms: the outlandish harlequin suits of many of the younger Chippewa – complete with scarlet sashes, blue leggings, black and white ostrich feathers, and an English-made beaver hat – and the traditional deerskins, rabbit furs and eagle feathers of the older males and of most of the Pottawatomies. At first Lily could observe only the natives since, when she had stepped out of the bush that morning, the plain was dotted with them. Later she followed the slow-paced Acorn towards the bay and the ceremonial party. There she saw the soldiers she had heard about from Gaston LaRouche and his war stories. Their scarlet uniforms caught the mid-morning sun, imprisoning it; the bright steel and gilt of their swords dazzled all who dared look their way. Never had she seen men uniformly attired, prancing in step, swinging their arms high in unison, marching to the panicked hammering of drums. She saw too their sleek rifles and the bayonets thin as a wish-bone: these weapons, she knew, were not for hunting.

There were a few white women in the throng too, whose tailored jackets and fancy bonnets she could only gawk at. Since observing the Partridges, mother and daughters, she was all too aware of her sack-cloth chemise, her improvised leggings, and her unadorned reddish-blond hair. She sat down by the fire-pit, the better to hide from notice. She did not hear Acorn squat beside her in the commotion, but then became aware of his presence. He held out an offering.

For you, little fawn, he said, averting his eyes. It was a gift, a buckskin pouch bearing an intricate configuration of beading that might have been inspired by the stars.

About noon-time, Lily ventured down to the River. The paddle-wheel steamer blocked her view until, from its iron stack, clots of soot shot upwards, smudging the sky. Several men tossed whole logs into a square stove-like affair and the flame inside blew white and venomous. Suddenly a man in a dirty uniform gave a shout. A metallic rod whined, the wooden sides of the boat shivered, and the wheel beat frantically at the calm water, sending the steamer northward towards the townsite.

The River was now hers. She could see the other side, but the trees there were faded and shapeless, so vast was the blue torrent flowing past them. To the south she could trace its surge for miles as it swept through the bush. This was no creek, however magnified in imagination. No shadow touched its translucent face save that of the herring-gull or fish-hawk; it was forever open to the sun and the stars. There was an eternal earth-light in that blue tidal twisting, even in the depths. It rejoiced in its flowing.

To the north, beyond this brief inlet, the near-bank bent slightly west, and Lily strained to see through the autumn haze the place where the Freshwater Sea of the Hurons fed its own waters into the River. She felt its mammoth presence behind the mist.

Papa spent much time talking with the officers and other white men from the steamer and Port Sarnia. Many times he laughed out loud; other times, his eyes clouded over, the way they did when he talked about Mama. Twice his gaze had searched out Lily among the throngs, looked relieved to find her, and then twinkled. Sounder hopped and skittered, threw dice and horse-traded, and finally snoozed beside her in the afternoon grass.

I’ll give you a half-dollar for it, ancient one. The officer held the coin up to the sun as if it were a jewel or a talisman. The old Pottawatomie chief eyed it, tempted. His hands unconsciously rubbed the black walnut war club they had polished with their affection these many years since the wars ended.

This club belong to my father, he said, more to himself than to the pot-bellied military man before him.

Two half-dollars, then.

The old one looked momentarily puzzled, then hurt. Finally he said, One half-dollar, letting the officer reach across and lift the club from its accustomed grip.

Papa was about to step forward when something in the Indian’s expression made him pause. Papa watched him put the silver coin into his pouch without examining it, and turn towards the river. Lily saw the look on Papa’s face; it was the same he wore just before he swung the hatchet at the beaver or muskrat not drowned by the trap.

Sun-in-bitch soldier, said Sounder behind them. Then, after a decent interval: They start dancing now.

Against the tangerine sun, the Indian dancers were silhouettes freed from gravity, moving at the will of the drum. Their feet struck the ground as if beating the stretched hide of the earth itself. The air above shook with their cries. They danced towards enchantment, expiation, communion. Lily was drawn into the melee and felt her feet take off, seeking out the cadence, finding it with astonished ease, letting her body swing free. She danced until exhaustion overtook her and she moved to the edge of the circle to sit and watch once again.

After a while a small group of Pottawatomies approached the central fire. They appeared to be members of a single family, a mother and father, some grown sons and a slender girl perhaps a few years older than Lily. The drum dance had stopped, but at a sign from the father it started again, subdued but insistent. His daughter knelt before him as he placed a garland of some sort on her head and began a long incantatory song in Pottawatomie. Lily could catch none of the words, but she knew it was a joyous chant, full of affection and hope.

She has changed her name, little dancer. It was the voice of Southener, the Shawnee, seated beside her. Her name was White Blossom. Tonight she becomes Seed-of-the-Snow-Apple. It has been proclaimed before all of the tribe. Now she must strive to live up to the name bestowed upon her.

Southener said nothing else, as the ceremony ended and the fire grew smoky and fickle.

Suddenly very tired, Lily dropped her head to his soft shoulder. Papa would find her there, safe and sleeping beside the old Shawnee.

4

In honour of Lily’s eleventh birthday, Papa had installed a glass window in her loft sanctuary. From there she could see the quarter moon, the black rampart of trees, the outlines of the new road to the west, and the figures of two men walking purposefully towards the cabin. They knocked, doffed their hats at Papa’s greeting, and entered, the candlelight catching their red hair, slick lapels, and polished boots.

As soon as Lily heard them speak she knew they were Scots. One spoke smoothly, the other with a sort of hitch, a kink somewhere in every sentence.

Yes, thank you very much, but just a thimbleful if you don’t mind. Good for the gout my doctor says.

A gurgle of whisky escaping.

I’ll join you as well. I haven’t got the gout, but of course I’m anticipatin’ it.

They both laughed.

Bein’ a gentleman who gets out and around, you’ll know all about our new county status and the marvelous – could I say miraculous – changes it’s bringin’ to our citizens, whatever their race or beliefs.

Or, uh, colour, added Kinky.

Citizenship in Her Majesty’s kingdom is colour-blind, I thank the Good Lord.

To Her Majesty!

What sorta changes do you have in mind for me? Papa asked, evenly.

Well now, they aren’t really, they don’t exactly apply to you, specifically or –

What my cousin is sayin’ is that we are merely servants, appendages of the council who in turn must carry out the laws duly passed by the Legislative Assembly to which – may I remind you – we all sent the Honourable Mr. MacLachlan.

We got snowed in, said Papa.

Precisely why the new road is bein’ expedited.

No citizen will be disenfranchised by a…by the weather.

What laws?

"You’ll recall that the survey of ’43, lamentable though it was, served us well enough, but a new one has been made necessary by certain irregularitiesdiscovered in the original."

They had, after all, only the, ah, crudest of instruments and the Indians, we are told, ah, pulled up the markers as fast as they could be laid.

Done, I’m assured, in all innocence.

This ain’t my land, then?

Dear sir, please, uh, please –

– don’t leap to such dire conclusions. We’re here on a mission of mercy, as it were. To be blunt, and to allay any apprehension on your part, let me say straightaway that I have been authorized by the duly elected council of Lambton County to inform you that several small errors were made, back in ’43, in the lot alignments along this particular section of Moore Township.

Very small errors, I assure you.

Papa’s chair emitted a sudden groan.

Infinitesimal.

Tell me the truth.

After a pause, Smoothie said: Your property is too far east, sir. That is why the road out there runs so far from your cabin-line. Your farm should front almost on the road.

Five yards from it accordin’ to the, ah, lawful survey.

But that still leaves more than thirty yards –

Thirty-three to be precise. Ninety-nine feet, three inches.

More than half my East Field!

That’s correct.

What does this mean?

Calm yourself, sir.

In technical terms it means that you do not own a half of your East Field. And, correspondingly, you own a hundred feet of land to the west –

Covered in bush!

There’s no need for, uh, that sort of tone.

Donald is right. You’ll have every opportunity to buy that improved field. No plans exist for a second line of farms behind this in the immediate future. We’re movin’ south with the new road, and the crossroad will continue from Millar’s farm to the east.

I’d say you have four – even five – years to buy that field.

What with? Papa’s question went unanswered.

There is, I’m afraid, one more point to be made.

A very wee one, Kinky said.

But pertinent. Accordin’ to your contract you were to make a specific number of improvements within ten years, excludin’ your first winter here.

I’ve met them, every one of ’em.

"In a sense, yes.

But with the technical loss of your East Field, you have, uh, technically –" Smoothie’s smoothness began to fail him.

You’ll need, sir, to clear another ten acres.

But not by fall. That’s why we’ve been sent here. The council is quite willin’ to accept either solution: the immediate purchase of the cleared field –

On reasonable terms you may, uh, be certain.

Or the clearing of ten acres by a year from September.

No one wants to see you lose this farm or be cheated of the, uh, fruits of your labour. All of us are here to build a better country than the one we’ve known, in a spirit of, uh, co-operation.

And love and harmony, free from prejudice.

I ain’t got the cash. You know that. So does MacLachlan. And I’d need money to hire help to clear a new field. I owe everybody in the district – time and dollars. I got no sons, you know. I got no wife.

Papa drank. I’m no goddam squatter!

The Scotch gentlemen’s fancy clothes brushed restlessly against the coarse deal of the chairs.

Perhaps the Lord will help you, sir.

God damn the Lord!

Gasps, scraping of chairs, rustle of coats, quick double-steps to the door.

In a quiet voice that came from a different, darker part of the soul, Smoothie said: We both know where you can get cash, anytime you want it. Your comings an’ doings have not gone unobserved. Good night, sir.

Papa did not reply, bidding goodbye with a sharp slam of the door. Though Lily could not see below, his agitation was palpable. She should go down to him, but hesitated. He had no son, he had no wife. As the night visitors passed beneath her window towards the county road, she heard their parting exchange.

The man’s a – a republican!

"He’s a fuckin’ Irishman, that’s