Lily's Story by Don Gutteridge Read Free Book Online Page B

waiting shoulder. And she did.
     
     
     
    All the fires were out when Lil woke with a
strange feeling inside her even stronger than before. Her friend
had placed a blanket over her and rolled another one as a pillow
for her head. She got up and, as if impelled by some force both
familiar and inscrutable, stepped straight into the darkness behind
the circle of dwellings. A slice of moon, as it sailed through
ragged cloud, was glinting streaks of light – enough for Lil to be
able to pick her way past the vines and overripe melons into the
pitch of the bush itself. If she were following a sound she was not
conscious of hearing it; and nothing could be seen ahead but the
denser shadow of the tree-trunks themselves.
    Lil stopped, in a bit of a clearing.
Overhead the moon popped out like a glass eye in a jelly jar. A bat
brushed its bachelor wing against the sky. In the nearest pine, a
Massassauga stuttered against bark. Owl’s eye flicked shut.
    Lil was already watching
them. The Indian girl, the one named Petta-song (Rising Sun) who had led
Sounder into her wigwam, was tipped over backwards on the ground.
Her hair, unbraided, parroted the lolling motion of her face
lathered with moon-sweat. Papa was kneeling between her bare legs
like the Frenchman when he prayed, though he wore no clothes.
Papa’s hands were gripping her breasts as if they were axe-handles,
and his whole body was bunched and aimed at hers as it was when he
had marked a pine-tree for chopping. With each blow Petta-song whimpered and
Papa sighed, until at last the girl flung both legs at the moon and
let out a shriek that shook the melons out of their sleep and
roused the embering campfires, that sounded like some virgin giving
birth to a god. To which news the axeman responded with the
seasoned groan of a man bearing the word of his own
demise.

 
    4
     
    1
     
    From her sanctuary in the loft Lil could see
– through the new glass window Papa had installed in honour of her
eleventh birthday – the stars, the quarter moon, the black rampart
of trees, and the outlines of a genuine road to the west, now that
they were officially a county. Behind her the deer-mice pretended
to skulk and cower, the swallows dozed with their new brood under
the eaves. Very clearly Lil saw the two figures detach themselves
from the road and walk purposefully towards the cabin. They walked
like no farmer Lil had ever seen. Just as they knocked, doffed
their hats and entered, the candlelight caught their red hair,
slick lapels, polished boots.
    As soon as Lil heard them speak she knew
they were Scotch. She was very good at voices. One spoke smoothly,
the other with a sort of hitch or 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 whiskey escaping.
    “ I’ll join you as well.
I-er-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 the new county and the
marvelous – could I say miraculous – improvements it’s bringin’ its
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