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  THE LAND’S LONG REACH

  Copyright © 2018 Valerie Mills-Milde

  Except for the use of short passages for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced, in part or in whole, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or any information or storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Collective Agency (Access Copyright).

  We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada.

  Cover artwork: Mary Riter Hamilton, “Mount St. Éloi,” Library and Archives Canada, reproduction copy number C-101318.

  Cover design: Val Fullard

  eBook: tikaebooks.com

  The Land’s Long Reach is a work of fiction. All the characters and situations portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Mills-Milde, Valerie, 1960-, author

  The land’s long reach / Valerie Mills-Milde.

  (Inanna poetry & fiction series)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77133-509-6 (softcover).— ISBN 978-1-77133-510-2 (epub).—

  ISBN 978-1-77133-511-9 (Kindle).— ISBN 978-1-77133-512-6 (pdf)

  I. Title. II. Series: Inanna poetry and fiction series

  PS8626.I4568L36 2018 C813’.6 C2018-901533-0

  C2018-901534-9

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Inanna Publications and Education Inc.

  210 Founders College, York University

  4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3

  Telephone: (416) 736-5356 Fax: (416) 736-5765

  Email: [email protected] Website: www.inanna.ca

  THE LAND’S LONG REACH

  a novel

  Valerie Mills-Milde

  INANNA PUBLICATIONS AND EDUCATION INC.

  TORONTO, CANADA

  For Donna

  You have to be true to yourself but at the same time understand, or try to, the world today in all of its manifestations…..

  The artist is and always has been ahead of his time.

  —Yvonne Mckague Housser, Canadian painter, 1897-1996

  PROLOGUE: MARGARET CARTER

  RUN. HURRY. FASTER. Margaret Carter is hurling herself down the footpath that leads to the still.

  The path is slick with mud and melting snow and her legs are weak. Spindly cedars crowd in, and to keep from falling, she grabs a branch, wrenching her shoulder and instantly, there is an explosion of pain.

  She stops and closes her eyes, tears of astonishment forming.

  Damn. If Margaret says this out loud, she doesn’t know it; a fever in childhood took part of her hearing. Sounds are felt as much as they are heard, and now the pain in her body is a screech, a howl.

  She opens her eyes, the pain receding. Look around, she commands herself. Where are you? Where? Through the trees, a dull moon; no help with illuminating the rocks that are half-sunk in muck. Keep going. You can’t stay here. Her feet strike hard things, the soft soles of her shoes giving little protection. No matter. Leaving the house, she had given no thought to a coat or boots.

  She doesn’t feel the chill tonight although the air is heavy. Rotting logs and leaves. Earth and wood smoke. The smell of the mash, sickening even after years of living with it. Dizzy now, her stomach heaving. Don’t stop. Go on. Her mind spins and then slows, a picture emerging, a story she once told the boys: trees that become horses and green moss that turns into saddles, soft cedar branches that transform into reins. You climb up on the backs of these creatures and ride to the other side of the woods, where there is sunlight and clear water. She sees the horses, their thrusting heads, their sure-footed gallop, and feels herself grow lighter, stronger.

  It was after her hearing went down that Margaret began to read in earnest, devouring fairy tales, every adventure story she could find. And then the stories had come to her without the need for books. She hadn’t written them down. Perhaps she should have.

  Further. Go further. Just ahead, the glint of metal. The open ground around the still is stirred with footprints, a mess of broken jars, pails, empty pallets. Four stumps have been dragged close for sitting. The stream is fast and swollen with melt, a glitter on the water near the bank. Light cast by flame, the fire licking the belly of the still.

  No one’s here. She knew he wouldn’t be. Further now, go on. It’s a relief to be moving. The path peters out just beyond the still, but her legs seem to know the direction. And then, in front of her, the ground swims up, the trees swirling, and to steady herself, she squats, puts her head in her arms, her thighs trembling beneath her. Water drips down the back of her neck. Cool drops that trace the length of her spine, soft like a child’s finger.

  Run. Try. She gets up and stumbles, gets up again. She has dreamt of places that are far away, of emerald jungles, of flat-footed elephants, of ships rolling in the sea. Now somewhere here, not far, is the only thing that matters. A child. Her very own.

  The stream is vanishing while all around the trees fall away. The sky is open. Sour clouds, a frail moon. Ice on the swamp, deadwood thrusting through, a dirty glitter where there is melt. A ringing in her head. No sounds. She strains to hear. Catch breath. Falling on her knees, her eyes scrub the ragged, muddy shoreline, her heart thrashing in her throat.

  Over there. Go on. Go. Reach.

  1. MAY 1914

  ENA IS ON HER KNEES in her garden when Hugh drives in with the bull, the animal a wedding gift, and late, because Jamie and Ena were married last October.

  Never in Ena’s life has she seen a bull this close. It stands on a cart behind Hugh’s team of horses, all four legs bound to the cart’s rails. There is a mountainous hump where a neck should be, and rigid waves of muscle cascade down the shoulders. The body and face are a splattering of black and white, and a fawn-coloured sac hangs between its legs. The animal is wall-eyed, the skull boxy. The head is pulled forward by a taut rope that has been looped through a ring in its nose. When Ena studies the soft and exposed throat she feels a sickening tug between staring and looking away.

  “Got your bull,” hollers Hugh, standing, hoisting his trousers. He squares his shoulders and studies the yard, the bull letting out a long, rising bellow that breaks in a series of snorts. Hearing it from inside the barn, Billie, the border collie, starts up with her yipping.

  The barn door opens and Jamie ambles out, Billie trotting behind him, her nose to his boot heels, her tongue lolling. In his hand is a tall Hawthorn staff, the instrument of persuasion he intends for the bull, and he lifts it high in a wide, graceful arc.

  “Look what the cat drug in,” he calls, grinning. The smile opens his face, which is narrow and gently angular. His bright hair is shaved close at the temple, the front fringe left long and swinging to one side where it grazes his cheek.

  “Yup. Well, you better be talkin’ about that bull and not me,” answers Hugh, his voice at once playful and gruff.

  Jamie silently laughs, his head nodding affably, his face taking on a shine. “Either way you want to take it. ” Then: “See you brought the boy—”

  Hugh has brought Blain Carter with him, a newly hired hand. Blain is related to Clem, Hugh’s lead man. His gangly legs hang from the side of the wagon and his dusty boots wag loosely off his heels. He wears black suspenders and brown trousers, and a blue-checked shirt billows at his thin waist; pale shinbones flash above his brown socks.

  “You gonna get down, Blain?” Hugh frowns at the boy, his head jerking toward the bullpen. “You help Jamie set the ramp. Then you be ready with the gate on that pen. And to give a hand with the lead, case we need you.”

  Ena looks at the bull. It is so heavily muscled she wonders if it can walk. Her gaze shifts to Blain who jumps from the wagon and scratches energetically behind one of his red-tipped ears. His expression looks easy and smoothed over, as if he conceals some secret feeling—wariness or doubt. He is considering the ramp, the effort it will take to lift it.

  In April, Ena had been at the home farm visiting with Hugh’s wife, Sarah. Glancing out the parlour window, she’d seen Blain aimlessly shovelling manure in the yard. Part way through the job he’d simply stopped working and studied the sky, a dreamy look floating across his features. Despite a cutting north wind, he wore no coat.

  Later, as they drove home, she asked Jamie who the boy was that Hugh had working for him—the boy seemed lost, she said, and he wasn’t properly clothed.

  Jamie gazed at her, curiosity in the look. It wasn’t like Ena to ask about other people. She seldom ventured into other people’s lives. The clamour of other people’s feelings disturbed her, the thrust of their disappointments, their desires.

  “You must mean Blain. He’s Clem and Annie’s nephew. Lost his mum a few weeks back. You likely read about it in the paper, Ena—Margaret Carter was her name. She got turned around in their bush and went through some ice.”

  Ena had recalled an article in the Sound Times from several weeks past, a story about the remains of a woman, discovered somewhere in the southern part of the Bruce Peninsula,
the body found floating in a half-frozen swamp. The woman had been face down, as though she were little more than dross or jetsam. Apart from her name, the article gave next to nothing about her.

  “You knew her…?”

  “Margaret used to help Mom with keeping house. I think she was deaf or close to it. Always talking a little too much, shouting to push the words out so people would hear her. Got on Mom’s nerves some,” he’d chuckled kindly with the memory, “but she was a cheerful enough girl.”

  Ena watches Blain and Jamie drag the ramp for the bull, Jamie bearing most of the weight. Next to the bull, Blain is utterly frail looking, something about him like a plant uprooted. After the ramp is secured, he walks the length of the wagon, the slight sway of his back giving him a rocking gait, just short of swagger. He circles the wagon twice, a mindless energy in his legs, his hands jammed into his pockets. Occasionally he lifts his feet as if to ease them, his gaze moving between the arc of the fields, and the garden where Ena kneels, her brown dress pooled over her thighs. Their eyes meet and for a moment they each become as still as stones. And then the intensity of the boy’s gaze breaks, his features melting into a lazy smile. He turns his head toward Billie who stalks around the horses’ giant hooves, sniffing the ground, whining. Blain lifts his knuckles to his head and rubs, the gesture already familiar.

  From the wagon, Hugh takes off his hat and tosses it, the brim catching the boy at the point of his shoulder. “Blain, is that dog more interesting than this damn bull?”

  Blain is suddenly wide-eyed, looking up at Hugh. “There’s a dog over at Jackson’s Corner that took off,” he says. It sounds like nonsense, each word tumbling over the next. “Gone for months and no one knew where. Then one day he showed up, sitting next to the barn and missing an ear—”

  “Blain, you gonna talk all day about dogs or are you ready to move that bull.” Hugh is scowling, his chin pushed out, his eyes buried beneath his brows.

  “No. Not a bit. I’m ready, Mr. McFarland.”

  “Glad to hear it. Now, you gotta check again and make sure that ramp’s really secure.”

  When Blain moves off, Hugh throws his coat onto the driver’s bench of the wagon and rolls back his sleeves. His forearms are amber-coloured, like Jamie’s. A sigh rises from him, his palm thumping his chest twice, as if to dislodge some small scrap of irritation. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulls out a pair of thick black gloves.

  Blain hops on the ramp, jumps up and down, and then fingers the knotted ropes that Jamie has tied at the corners. “It’s real good, Mr. McFarland,” he says, nodding as if to assure himself. He leaps from the ramp and saunters to the fence.

  Hugh and Jamie talk, Hugh still up on the wagon with the bull, Jamie on the ground with Billie. The McFarland brothers have light hair, although Hugh’s is ashier. While Jamie is long-boned and fluid, Hugh’s shape is a collection of hard mounds, thrusting lines, a handsome enough man except for the wayward eye—the left one—which veers badly outward, not staying fixed but perpetually struggling to come back into line.

  A single cloud floats across the sun, its shadow more dramatic because of the absence of others. In a moment the sun shows again, more brilliant than it was before. Ena blinks and adjusts her sight, her focus keenly fixed on the men, the boy, and the animal. Earlier that morning, Jamie had told Ena it can be a big job, moving a bull, and anything can happen. Now, seeing the rope-bound bull and the men so close to it chatting idly in the sun, it seems to Ena that the moment will go on forever. The bull will stay tied to the wagon, the boy will be always leaning against the fencepost, Jamie and Hugh will share stories, trade news of their neighbours, rib one another, talk about the market price of their crops.

  The sun is climbing the sky, the heat pressing on her back. The spring has almost passed she thinks, eagerness mounting in her belly. She turns to the garden and scoops black earth into her hand. Holding it to her nose, she breathes, the smell making her think about stone and iron and rotted leaves. Today she will put in her peas, although Jamie had warned her it was too early to plant. In May, this close to Georgian Bay, she might wake up to a frost.

  Although Ena knows almost nothing about gardens, she looks at the loosened ground, imagining the possibility of rows of tender green shoots: peas, cabbage, beans, and potatoes. One entire row just for tomatoes, she decides. Ena feels the sharp anticipation of a harvest—her first. Two weeks before, she had taken a spade and dug around the edges of the overgrown plot, and then turned the heavy soil with a fork. She’s grown stronger since coming to the farm; when she looks at herself in the mirror she doesn’t see a woman but rather a boy—her centre of gravity seated in her powerful thighs and calves. Her deep-set eyes shine back at her, the colour of Indian tea.

  Watching her work, Hugh, who had been helping Jamie with the ploughing, had given her an encouraging wink. The very next day, he surprised her with a full wagon of rotted manure. “This will kick up whatever you got growing,” he grinned over the rise of his shoulder as he shovelled clumps of manure from the cart. He’d stood and watched her for a few minutes, curiosity and amusement in his face.

  “You got any questions about how to plant a garden?”

  Ena had shaken her head no and Hugh let out a long round-sounding laugh. “You afraid of words or are words afraid of you, Ena?”

  Ena had stared at the uneven soil for a moment. “Fear’s got nothing to do with it,” she said, raising her gaze to him.

  He’d looked back at her quizzically and shrugged. “Best leave you to it, then.”

  She liked Hugh but the sheer force of him was a distraction. What she wanted was to enter into the puzzle of the garden on her own. She’d applied all the strength she had into preparing the plot and after it was done, her body was alive with pain, her back throbbing, her calves tight. When she thinks of the ache, she savours the memory.

  She looks away from the garden now and lets her eyes travel the newly furrowed fields that stretch behind the grey barn and end in a line of dense bush. To the east of the barn is an ancient orchard, the trees stooped, the limbs tangled and broken. These are Russet trees and their apples, if they still produce any, will be nutty and dry. Perfect for baking. Next spring she will learn how to prune them.

  The house rises, sober and plain behind her, a single gothic window above a narrow porch, a peaked roof, no gables or fret-work. It sits at the centre of the farm, and the land flows away from it in all directions.

  JAMIE FIRST BROUGHT HER HERE the summer before they married. He had slowed the horse gradually and turned into a lane that was bristling with thorn and golden rod.

  “A fine sort of place,” he joked, nodding at the forlorn house, “for a family of rabbits. What do you think, Ena? Is it fit for people?” His eyes narrowed as they moved slowly over the ragged fields. “Not as many acres as the home farm. This one belonged to Uncle Ross.“ He pushed his hands into his pockets and smiled, suddenly shy with her. There was an appeal in the look. “Ross was old—he’d let things go before he died. People can’t go on caring for things by themselves. We’re dividing land now. The family, I mean. I’ll take this farm over. Hugh’s working the bigger one—Dad’s farm. “

  He’d gazed into the west, where summer thunderclouds were building, large overblown heads of grey-white glowering in the distance. Turning, he drew her in close, and then lowering his head, he kissed her, stroking the hollow of her cheek with his thumb.

  “We could make something of the place, Ena. You and me.”

  She had circled him with her arms. They stood like that on the tilting porch, hardly noticing that the rain had started.

  ENA LETS THE EARTH FALL through her open fingers. The sensation of it leaving her causes a ruffling in her chest, a strange weightlessness and she puts both palms down against the feeling, the heels of her hand pressed deeply, assuredly, into the cold ground. She pushes herself up to a stand.

  The day is clear, the light almost too sharp, and she throws an arm across her eyes and studies the men’s progress with the bull. Blain is standing to the side of one of the enormous horses, his hand on its halter, his eyes on Hugh who is undoing a rope from one of the bull’s bony legs.