Lily's Story by Don Gutteridge Page B

like a
honey-bee’s dance of direction; Old Samuels had his face aimed at
Lil’s diminishing figure, his posture giving nothing away of
sadness or hope, resignation or complaint, certain only that he did
not need his eyes to see what was happening under them nor many
other things life had reputedly reserved for the
sighted.
    Lil then broke her second
vow. Fortunately Papa, who was now several strides ahead of her,
didn’t hear.
     
     
     
    T hey followed the
well-tramped trail north for several hours. The sun warmed them
with its mid-day welcome. Wild Phlox and amber columbine nodded
jauntily from the verges. In the pines, tanagers and siskins
tumbled and iridesced. A fox snake yawned his whole length in the
heat kept cozy by the trail.
    They were travelling
light, of course. Papa had a backpack with food and overnight
utensils, a water bottle, rifle and hatchet. In a harness neatly
rigged by Acorn, Lil carried two blankets and some goodies secretly
slipped to her at the last moment by Maman. In the beaded pouch
given her by Sounder and belted to her waist, she had carefully
placed Mama’s cameo pendant, the gold cross, and the rabbit’s foot
Old Samuels had rubbed almost smooth in thirty years of not
worrying. There was no need for anything more: they had packed
their few belongings – clothing, trappings, utensils, tools – in
two large wooden cases about the size of a child’s coffin. Luc, in
a rush of altruism, had promised to hitch Bert and Bessie up to Mr.
Millar’s cart as soon as they were free from their summer stumping,
and deliver the trunks to Port Sarnia.
    So it was only the weight of
the day itself that bore heavily on them as they trudged step by
step away from all they had become a part of. Indeed whenever the
little eddy of excitement (which Lil had been suppressing all
morning) bubbled up on its own, she felt an acute sense of having
betrayed something secret and previous. I will hate Bridie, I will,
was her less-than-satisfactory antidote.
     
     
     
    T here would have been
no eddy of anticipation if Lil had known it would be sixty years
before her feet again touched this ground – now so sacred, so
indistinguishable from herself. And she would learn, only much
later, that before the coming winter was out Maman LaRouche would,
only partly against her will, succumb to the engorged, mutinous
thing fattening itself inside her. And Monsieur, who had seen death
routinely in the War and on the stark faces of babes ravaged by
cholera and worse, would not recognize it in the pleading eyes of
his wife until she herself begged for the priest. Then, as he had
so often vowed, LaRouche strapped on his snowshoes and headed north
for Port Sarnia through the maze of deer-trails he thought he knew
well. Confused and exhausted he stumbled into the Partridges at
Corunna three days later. Partridge suggested a horse, which the
weeping, grateful man accepted before he realized that while he had
fed and groomed horses for Colonel Baby during the War, he had
never actually gotten around to riding one. The priests at St.
Joseph’s naturally assumed that it was LaRouche himself who
required the last rites, and it was almost an hour before the
matter was straightened out and Father McAllister tucked the
babbling man into the cutter beside him and started on the return
journey. At Partridges a Chippewa lad was attached to the entourage
to guide them to the interior of the township. However, when they
reached Millar’s corner at nightfall, the old man was dreaming that
he and Mathilde – his Mattie, his Fluffy – were whirling at the
centre of the governor’s reel under the candelabras of the
demi-royal salon as the fiddles and drums applauded their bravado,
their panache , and Mattie’s
eyes glowed like chestnuts set in the sweetest, deepest cherrywood
flesh. The hubbub of the sleigh’s arrival at the cabin woke the
dreamer too abruptly and, not quite realizing the transition that
had taken place, he flung his