SNAPS AND SABLE RIVER WEST




When my Dad, Clifford, left Sable River West in Nova Scotia to find a

new life in British Columbia logging in the legendary Douglas Fir forests, I was two

years old, my sister was one and my younger brother was three months. Mom followed

him a few months later on the train with her young flock..

Three years and several short stays later in a variety of logging camps and small

Kootenay communities, we were back in Nova Scotia.

*****************
We ‘made’ Liverpool in the darkness of a late September evening. Our mud- caked 1949 Ford pickup looked like a horseless-covered wagon. Dad had stretched an old, brown tarpaulin over a bulging load of boxes, trunks and furniture. We’d squished into the cab in assorted arrangements for the 5000-mile journey.
Liverpool,where my Mom's sister Dora live was about 30 miles short of Sable River, our final destination. They hugged and cried happy tears in the front yard of the yellow bungalow with its ivy-covered veranda. Two large maples shed mitten-sized orange and red leaves over the reunion. Uncle Pete, a short man with an accent, shepherded us into their home where their two sons and a daughter eyed us shyly as we did them.
Uncle Pete and Aunt Dora insisted we stay the night. But Dad was ‘antsy’. It was his mother and father whom we were going to live with on the ‘home place’ in Sable.
So they negotiated a compromise.
“Whatdaya think Bub?” Dad tousled my head. “You and I best go up to Sable and see if it’s on the same spot in the road.”
A little while later, as the truck whined up a steep grade, Dad looked at me with that little lopsided grin. It was the one I always saw when he felt good about what he was doing. “Port La Bear (that’s what I heard then but I learned later seeing it on a map that it's Port Le Hebert) hill . . . won’t be long now.”
As we plowed through the night on furrows of yellow from the headlights of our faithful truck, I suddenly felt enormously grown up. The cab was so roomy and I got to sit beside the window!
Dad had grown up here. He knew this country like the back of his hand and he’d say, “If you go back far enough probably everybody’s related one way or another.” He always told stories about ‘ back home’. Many names of places and people were already familiar to me even though I didn’t know who or where they were.
After a few more miles we rumbled over a wooden bridge. “Tom Tigney River.” Dad explained. “Park Harlow’s mill is just up there a ways.” He nodded his head to the right. “He gave me my first job in the bush skidding smoke wood with his team of oxen. Some folks around here don’t like him . . . think he’s a mean bugger. Guess he can be. Always treated me fair.”
Dad pointed to a whitish blob on the left as the headlights shine bounced off a set of gas pumps. “ This here’s Bernard Dexter’s garage.”
We bumped onto the decking of another bridge. “ Well, Sable River, son. Our place goes right down to the river. Good swimming hole there and a nice little beach with red sand. Wait’ll you see it.”
The highway swung left. Dad pointed off to the right. “If we went straight up there, that’s the Nine Mile Road…. Your Grandad has a woodlot up there. Been in the family since I was knee high to a grass hopper.” We bounced over a railway crossing. Dad pointed out Thelma Harlow’s general store and the school house right beside it.
“Thelma’s married to Park Harlow’s son, Tom.” Dad always liked to tie everybody together. “That’s the school where you’ll be going. Same one I went to. You might even get the same teacher. Far as I know, Grace Freeman is still teaching. You better mind her. She doesn’t take guff from anyone. I learned from personal experience. ” Dad’s voiced quivered with emotion.
“Home sweet home with the fire black out.” He muttered.
The truck slowed . We turned left into a narrow, bush- lined driveway. In a few moments I saw a big barn in the bobbing headlights. We swung right. The side of a white shiplap, two- story house with a high, sharp sloped roof hovered before us.
Dad looked at his watch against the dim yellow of the dashboard lights. “Nearly eleven. No lights on. I guess Mother and Dad gave up waiting. It’s way past their bedtime. They were expecting us tonight but they don’t have a telephone so I couldn’t get a message unless I ‘d got hold of the neighbors.”
Suddenly a glow the color of butter smeared a couple of small windows.
“A light’s on Dad.” I exclaimed.
“Huh.” Dad gave a knowing little grunt. “Your Grandad goes to bed early but sleeps with one eye and an ear open.”

A door opened. More yellow oozed out of the house. A hunched figure raised an arm as a visor to peer into the headlights. Dad shut them off, switched off the engine and we both climbed out, closing the doors with a good slam which they needed to close properly.
It sounded like blasts from a double-barrelled shotgun in the crisp fall air. I followed Dad as he grabbed the man’s hand in a firm grip and held it.
“Got a little late for us to stay up and wait.” The man explained. “Sounded like a strange vehicle when the tires hit the gravel in the driveway. Good to have you back son.”
He peered toward me. “Now, who’s this you got with you?”
“This is number one son.” Dad brought me forward with his hand on my shoulder. “Glenn, this is your Grandad.”
“Sure looking all grown up now Churchill. Just a tyke three years ago.” He caught my hand in a firm grip. “ How ‘bout we get inside Glenn? Cold enough for frost on the rhubarb tonight.”
Dad moved spryly as another silhouette appeared in the doorway. They hugged and
exchanged tender sounding words.
“Well, well, well.” The words flowed smooth as molasses on a hot soda biscuit. “Have you got a hug for your Grammie, Glenn?”
I walked forward and was gently drawn into the warm bosom and the husky yet soft arms.
“Let’s get inside. You must be freezing out here.”
“No, I’m fine.” I replied.
“Well, you’re sure tougher than me young man.” She said.
With that she had her arm around my shoulder and headed us into the house. Just to the right as we entered, was the glistening black top of a kitchen stove with a white enamel warmer running along the back of it. I recognized the acrid aroma of freshly lit kindling and newspaper.
“It’s not too late for a snack is it? You men have had a long trip.” Grammie looked at me with a twinkle then over to Dad whose moment of hesitation was taken as an okay. “ Where’s the rest of the family?” Grammie asked as she shuffled toward a cupboard beside the stove.
“They’re at Pete and Doras’’. I’ll go get them tomorrow.” Dad explained.
“I’ve got water on Churchill. I knew that was Dad’s middle name but I’d never heard anyone call him that. “You know we still don’t use coffee but I have tea or Postum.”
“Tea’ll be fine, Mother.” Dad replied.
She returned from the cupboard carrying a round, well-worn cookie tin with pictures of castles on its side and top. “I just made these this afternoon.” Deft fingers removed the lid.
“Ginger snaps!” My Dads eager voice sang out as his hand glided past my head toward the open tin.
“Ah. Ah.” Grammie warned him off and pulled the tin back. “Glenn gets first pick.” She moved
the tin to where I could reach it.
The fragrance of ginger and molasses wafted from the container. It was filled with brown rectangular cookies. Each had precise parallel lines in groups of four, running diagonally along them. I wrapped my hand around one.
“Oh, that’s not enough for a growing boy.” Grammie urged.
I lifted out two more. She smiled her approval as I nibbled at the corner of one. They were hard and crunchy. The taste instantly made my mouth water. Dad grabbed a handful and stuck about half of one in his mouth. The sharp, hard corners bulged his cheeks. Grandad slipped one from the can protesting quietly that he shouldn’t have one because it was too late for him and cookies might keep him awake.
The gingery flavored dough had been rolled thin so when baked they became hard and snapped exactly on grooves in the dough. Grammie’s snaps were pretty much identical. The decorative lines perfectly repeated on each cookie.
While the kettle heated, Grammie went out to the small porch we’d entered through and returned with a gallon glass jar half full of milk. She had to tip it back and forth several times to mix in the thick cream that had separated. “A glass of nice cold milk is just what you need Glenn, to wash down those snaps. Soak them in the milk if you want to soften them up a bit. That’s what we do around here anyways.”
“Sure feels good to be home.” My Dad said. His lopsided grin was wider than usual.

***************
The taste of ginger snaps and milk. Grammie’s caring smile and warm voice. The feel from the place that had been called ‘home’ for several generations of my family tree have remained gentle breezes through my mind. I’ve always felt them as my ship of life sailed far from those times and places. And now they push persistently against a spinnaker of silent hope that would guide the voyage that way again.

Drowning Eagles

There is no road to the Tsmpsian Reserve. Boats or float planes like the Beavers and Otters are the only reasonable ways to get there. Somebody rich like B.C. Hydro men or loggers coming to look at our trees come by helicopter. Once, a fella from Ontario with a shiny suit and sharp pointed shoes came by helicopter looking to buy some of the gold jewellery I carve. I didn’t like the way his slippery,city voice told me how famous I was.
I am a traditional Indian. My son Samual has been raised to know the old ways. I’ve taught him the Tsmpsian language. It was easier to do with just the two of us which is the way it was most of the time in our house. Since he was a baby, I’ve told him all the stories passed to me by my parents and grandparents and other elders in the village. Samual most liked hearing stories that had any part about an eagle and sometimes I would add a part about an eagle just to make him smile. I’ve taught him many old songs and chants. Now Samual is nearly 16 and he gets confused about the old ways and all the new things he sees in the modern world. Like some of the songs I taught him; he made them into songs with English words and made up the tune on an old guitar his friend Rickey Robertson gave him. Samual wails like a wolf in the autumn suffering with a big bellyful of rotten Sockeye.
Our house is in the old section of the village. We got some new shingles on the roof last year to fix the leaks. It needs paint. The front window that looks out on Burl Bay has a big crack that runs a crooked trail from from corner to corner. Samuals’ complaining made me fix the roof and now he wants the window fixed. I tell him that at least it looks out on the ocean instead of what the people in those houses up in the new section get to see. “If all I had to see was mountains with the trees torn off,” I tell him, “The window might as well be boarded up.”
“Why don’t we burn this old shack down and go for one up in the new section?” Samual asked, one night after visiting his friends up there.
Even though he laughed, his eyes told me he was only half kidding. Others had done it. When Samual talked that way it made me think of his mother. She had taken off from us when he was two years old. I blamed my cousin, Moses Usher, for turning her away from the traditional ways. He always talked lots about the big city. Then he took her there. He came back to the village ten years later wearing a big cowboy hat with a fake eagle feather in it, boots made from “real” alligator skin according to him and he walked like he had a prawn trap between his legs. All he talked about was being a cowboy in Montana and all he said about Connie was that they split up five years ago and he didn’t know “where the fuck she went.”
Whenever I saw Moses walking around the village I got this worry that Samual would also get taken away from me someday. And I get this nightmare about two strangers coming to the door. They tell me to let Samual come with them. No reason. Just smiling faces. And I wake up in cold sweat feeling sticky like a salmon that has just died.

*****


Samual is a real hero in the village. He scored the winning points for our team when they won the All-native Tournament in Prince Rupert this spring. He played on the men’s team all winter even though he is only 15 years old. Basketball is very important in all the villages in this part of the land. It is like a test of manhood...a way to still do battle. I have accepted that Samual has more gifts from the Spirits for basketball than for carving. I see his warrior eyes and his eagle ways when he moves on the hardwood floor. When the team won the trophy Samual also got one for Best Newcomer. The team carried him around the village on their shoulders when they had a victory parade. I sure was proud too but I couldn’t explain why something about it didn’t feel right inside my heart.

It was three weeks after the big parade. One of those Vancouver Island Helicopters swooped over the mountain and put down on the big cement pad by the village Band Council Office. I watched through my cracked front window as a tall, skinny white guy with legs that flopped in all directions when he walked and a short white guy with a bald head and sun glasses talked to Moses Usher who always appeared when strangers came to the village. Moses waved his arms a lot and strutted around like he was doing a real bad Chicken Dance.

“Is this where Samual Abraham lives?” The tall one looked over my head when I answered the knock at the door. The short one looked up at me from behind. He pushed his glasses back up the bony bridge of his nose with thin white fingers. I could see he breathed hard and sweated from the five minute walk.

When I let them inside, they started piling on the praise about Samual.
“Your boy has a big future...a BIG future in basketball,” said the tall one.
“Think about the good education Samual is going to get if he goes out to school,” the short one squeaked.
His voice resembled his mousy body which paced back and forth in front of the front window. They said the same few things over and over again like maybe I didn’t understand.
“This is a big, big opportunity for Samual.” They both talked at the same time and nodded with each other in agreement.
Samual was all smiles and nodding his head with them. When they left, Samual was ready to go too. I told them we had to think about it. What I was really thinking about was my dream.

It is the biggest thing to ever come between us. At my work desk I go through the motions of carving. I cannot feel the gold or the tools in my hands. When Samual is home he lies slumped in a corner on the old couch that has its stuffing sticking out in the places where the cats have sharpened their claws. The argument is the same every day.
“It doesn’t matter how hard I try, my feelings stay the same. Leaving home will be no good for you.” My voice is low and the words have no emotion left in them.
“No good for you.” Samuals’ voice sounds the same as mine. “That’s what you mean isn’t it?”

“You know all the stories about what happens to young people from the village when they get out in the big city.” My hands stop their work; the one that carves hangs over the one holding the golden shield. Time is frozen like the half finished circling eagle on the shield. “Is that what you want to happen to you?”

“How many times do I have to say it?” Samual’s voice slaps me like his hand slaps the worn out arm of the couch. ”I am not like the others.”
“Basketball is just a game.” I say. Those guys that came here were saying all those things just to get you to play a game. When they don’t want you anymore you’ll be back here. Sounding just like Moses Clayton....walking around with a big bunch of stories to tell whoever would listen. What’s the good of doing that?”
The couch groans a sound of relief. Samuals scuffs his way to his bedroom. Soon the guitar strings moan into their box. Samual plays loud and hard. BOMP PA PA BOMP PA PA BOMP BOMP BOMP BOMP... BOMP PA PA BOMP PA PA BOMP BOMP BOMP BOMP. Hi tongue grabs words from deep in his throat and throughs them like shooting flames....

Ohhh..oh powerful and mighty eagle
Give me your spirit
Let your strong and fierce ways
Run through my heart

The vibrations from Samuals singing and playing shake loose little pieces of dust from the window frames. I watch them drift their aimless paths to the floor.

Ohhh...oh powerful and mighty eagle
I need these gifts from you
So the lands and the waters
Will serve me like they serve you
BOMP PA PA BOMP PA PA BOMP BOMP BOMP.

I turn to see Samual standing with his legs wide apart. His straight black hair snaps backwards then forwards in the opposite direction of his snapping head. His eyes are shut tight. His face makes strange shapes that belong on a mask. His arms are stretched to each end of the guitar which is slung low across his body. The right hand pounds against the strings. Louder and harder.

When he is wet on his hair and face and where his blue denim shirt goes under his arms,finally there is silence. He walks near to my working place. He looks straight into my face. “What if we both moved to the city? That would be better wouldn’t it? There’d be money from the government I’d get for going to school. We could get a nice place. You could still carve.”

“This village. This is the place where I must carve Samual. You should know that by now.”
“What about me?” Samuals’ voice is different than I have ever heard it before. “What about my life?” He smashes the guitar across the couch. “You don’t care shit about my life! All you care about is yourself!”
The words crash into my ears like ocean storm waves on a slab of seashore. When the front door slams behind him the force shakes loose the cracked halves of the front window. The spears of glass fall like they’re being dropped one by one, splattering across the linoleum. My chest feels like a ceremonial drum with the beats coming from the inside. Heaviness closes my eyes. I must remember, I must remember...

*****
It is the early part of summer; the warm days that come near the end of May and early in June. Out on the government dock the young boys fish. They are jigging with their rods and buzz bomb lures for the Tommy cod lazing in the shadows of the big black posts under the dock. The fun is to watch the boys reel up their wriggling catches. When the tide is low the air dances of the fish are about 30 feet long. I see Samual lay down his fishing rod and pick up one of the dead fish. He hollers loud so everyone will watch. The fish spins through the rays of sun and splats on the water.
The eagles are around because they have nesting places not far from the village. They
glide and flap and circle and play their eagle games of chase over the bay in front of the village. When they’re tired of that they fight for the best perches on the big spruce across from the dock. Now, from the big tree a six foot wing span rides a silky curtain to the ripples on bay. Yellow talons grab the fish cleanly. Surging wings grab big chunks of sky. I have seen the eagles all my life and their spirit fills me with joy.

“Mr. Abraham! Mr. Abraham!”
One of the boys is trying to get me watching another fish thrown, I think.
“Mr. Abraham! Come quick!”
I try to see who it is. I rub my eyes. Through the sharp edges of the front window I see Billy Dundas running as hard as he can. I make it to the front door the same time as he does.
“Mr. Abraham, come down to the docks. It’s Ricky Robertson. He was fishin’ and...”
air scrapes into his chest. “And he fell off the end of the dock!”
Billy stumbles behind me down the path towards the dock. “And Samual jumped in to try and save Ricky cuz he was screamin’ he can’t swim. And now we can’t see nobody down there!”
At the dock all the kids are trying to tell me at the same time what has happened. “Samual brought Rickey up two times. I seen him!” It is Billys younger brother Art. “What did you do?” I scream in his scared face. What did any of you do? Stand around and watch?” I run along the edge of the dock looking over. A running shoe drifts out from the black shadows. It wallows in the ripples. White. Lifeless. Long after night comes, village men poke the inky sheen with gaff hooks and spotlights from boats tied to the slimy fingers of the dock.

*****

There was a time we looked after our own dead. Now, two men in a helicopter come and take Samual and Rickey away. They have to go to the hospital for a doctor to make sure they are dead. Then they go to a funeral place to make sure they are ready to bury. The new tradition we have now is the way we return to the village with our dead. A funeral procession of boats carry the coffins and families up the coast from Prince Rupert, into the bay and up to the dock.
The day is sunny. The glistening, white hull of the seine boat, Blistered Harvest plows through soft rolls of green water and the breeze is just enough to feel cool on my face as I stand beside the polished oak. The other boats follow our wake. They make such a straight line it gives only glimpses of waving masts, one behind the other. Then when we turn past the green buoy off Blistered Point just outside the village it is like we are a rope being pulled through the water. Only when the boats enter the inside harbour do they go different directions to find their tie-up places at the docks.
Rickeys’ parents, Joe and Wanda Robertson, look pretty sick when I see them inside the church. When I walk past where they are sitting I get the smell of liquor real strong. I know they are on the “go” lots. That’s the word for partyin’. They weren’t in the village when Rickey drowned.
In the hot, stuffy church Pastor Beams leads in the singing of Amazing Grace. Pastor Beams is a thin, white guy with a lump that goes up and down in his throat when he sings. His voice doesn’t fit his size. When we sit down at his direction he moves over to the pulpit. “This is such a tragic loss for all of us. Our young people should not be taken from us in the dawn of their day. And it is at these times we need Gods’ strength to find the difficult answers.”
There is a rattle of feet finding the floor. It is Joe Robertson standing up. His face is puffy and twisted by unnatural forces. His words come out thick and wet. “If the government didn’t build a dock with no God damned guard rails my boy wouldn’t have fell off it.” He lurches his distorted, liquor swollen face towards me. “And if there were some ropes or life rings down there, Samual wouldn’t be dead either!”
The force of his own words seems to push him backwards. Wanda has to hold him off of herself as falls back into his seat. They both wail and moan and hang on to each other.

After the funeral , I am alone at last with the night air that comes off the sea. The only sound is the soft roll of waves licking at the rocky shores of the bay. I look down from my place on the edge of the government dock. The water is shiny and black as a Ravens back.
“Samual.” I say. “Today I will tell you the story about the eagle that could swim.

Well , there was this eagle back in the times when eagles ruled our land. Rok. That was his name. Rok had a special gift. He never waited for the salmon to rise up to the top of the water. When Rok was hungry he dove into the sea....deep down to where the fish are. He would pick the fattest one, grab it with his mighty talons and with one big push of his wings would soar up through the water as if it was air. And when he came to surface he’d rise right up into the sky like he was fired from a white mans fire monster. Rok was a hero be cause he always caught extra for all the other families.
But Sa-la, his father, did not like this. He loved his son and was afraid he would lose him. Maybe to the sea...maybe to all the others that would depend on Rok for fresh fish. One day Sa-la could not keep his thoughts silent any longer. “Rok, you must stop swimming in the sea. It is dangerous and I don’t want to lose you. Just be like the other eagles.”
“It is my gift, father.” Replied Rok. “I must use it.”
Later that day, Rok went out to fish. He dove into the sea and grabbed a big, fat salmon. But when he tried to lift it, the gift was gone. Try as he might the fighting salmon which he could not release from his claws dragged him deeper into the blackening depths. His father’s words echoed in his mind and then with a blinding white flash he entered the spirit world.

“ Did you like that story, Samual. I hope it isn’t too sad for you.” Lincoln Abraham let his eyes rest on the golden eagle medallion in his hand. “We are all drowning eagles, Samual.”

Lincoln Abraham arched his arm and heaved the medallion onto the sea. As it touched the water he was blinded by a white explosion. An eagle erupted from the waters like a shooting star returning to the heavens. In an eye’s blink the light was gone. Lincoln Abraham stood for several minutes in stone silence
He did not to notice the vapours seeping around his clenched fist. In the darkness, he feltThat his hand again clutched the eagle medallion.