Lily's Story by Don Gutteridge Page A

with a cracked head. Somehow – she
did not know how – it had more to do with Solomon and the look Papa
gave her when she woke to find him staring from the doorway, the
shed door in back of them protesting as it swung on one precarious
hinge.
    “ We’re goin’
to live near Port Sarnia,” was all he said, “with your Aunt
Bridie.”
    Who was news to Lil. From
Mama she had gleaned a little now and then about her relatives –
enough to conclude that Papa came from a large family, her own
being mostly dead, but never had she put a name on any of them
though it was obvious she sometimes wished to. Instead she told
stories only about long-gone relatives, all of whom apparently were
squires or beauties or gawains of the first order. Mama’s stories
were like her songs – a kind of lullaby. Bridie was no lullaby. She
was a real, living aunt with a name as durable as a fieldstone. Lil
wanted to ask about an uncle for Bridie but restrained
herself.
    “ I wrote her a
letter a while back,” he said some days later, seeing Lil seated
near the ripening wheat of the East Field and staring across its
tender, involuntary undulations towards the red-blue granite on
which one of Old Samuels’ nephews had chipped the name ‘Kathleen’.
“Chester and her been wantin’ us to come up there ever since your
Mama passed on.”
    Chester? Lil came out of her
brown study.
    “ Land’s mostly
cleared up there. We’ll help ‘em out at first. Then get our own
place.” Lil wanted so badly to believe the enthusiasm now in his
voice. She wanted to ask about Chester but held back, hoping for
more.
    “ We’ll bring
your Mama up there, too; some day,” he added with effort, his hands
trying to be light and consoling on her shoulders.
    Mama
wasn’t up
there , Lil knew, but could
find no words to help Papa understand. She’s here – in these trees,
the wheat, the undug stones, in the birdsong enticing shadows
towards dawn, in the wind that lives in these special places only,
in that part of the sky she shared with us and that brings such joy
to the guardian gods. Lil’s quiet weeping made Papa’s hands shake,
and he turned back to the cabin, confused. Lil licked her own tears
with her tongue, savouring them.
     
     

    I t was a regular road
now running abreast of the line of a dozen farms north of theirs.
The new neighbours, above Millar’s, came out to watch them leave:
whole families lined up at the edge of their land and waved
curiously, tentatively, uncertain of the meaning of what they were
witnessing. When Lil and Papa passed the last farm – with only its
doorway cleared, and stumps and tree branches smoking behind the
unchinked log hut (where the new road abruptly became the old
slashed trail again) – Lil did one of the things she promised
herself she would not do on this day: she glanced back. Standing in
the middle of the road a hundred feet behind them were the
unmistakable silhouettes of Old Samuels and his favourite nephews.
A few days before all three had materialized one morning,
unannounced, and stayed the entire day, helping Papa with some of
the packing and dismantling but never once mentioning the fact of
their leaving. Sounder chattered and laughed, Acorn smiled with his
soft eyes, and Old Samuels puffed his pipe and talked exclusively
to Lil in Pottawatomie. “White Mens always coming and going,” he
said several times, unprompted, “Attawandaron stays.” Once he
added, not without charity, “’Course, White Mens still young, got a
lot to learn before this world ends.” At dusk they left, saying no
formal goodbyes but carrying Papa’s old sow in their arms as
graciously as they could manage. Lil knew she wouldn’t see them
again.
    Even now it was only
their darker shadows in the constant early morning that she saw as
she peered back over her shoulder. Acorn was as still as his name;
Sounder was hopping and gesticulating beside Old Samuels as if
describing for him exactly what he was seeing and feeling,