Andrei and the Snow Walker Read online

  At noon Andrei trudges along the path through the trees to the Kuzyk yard. He notices Marie at the well, bent over the water trough. Her linen smock and her headscarf are covered with blue splatters. She pumps water into the trough, then scrubs the bristles of a push broom. An unwashed hand brush sits on the well cover. A daub of the blue quicklime solution decorates the tip of her nose.

  “Whitewash?” Andrei asks.

  “The old woman added a full bottle of washing blue she bought from the Rosthern store.”

  “Rich like a pahn,” Andrei says. The Kuzyks buy sacks of quicklime and bottles of washing blue, while if the Baydas want a finishing coat on a wall, they have to use the ash-grey clay Andrei digs from the swamp. But then it would be foolish to spend money on a buda. Maybe when they build a real house, Tato will buy quicklime.

  “Kuzyk must have a lot of money.” Andrei picks at a callous on the palm of his hand. “Wouldn’t it be nice to farm if you had money?”

  “Money isn’t everything.” She scrubs extra hard and glares at Andrei.

  “He’s a generous man,” Andrei says, turning his gaze to survey the yard, the buildings, and the horses in the barn corral. Marie lifts the broom out of the trough and shakes it, showering Andrei’s trousers with water. Just as she does this, the battalion of geese struts toward them, heads forward and extended on bent necks, tongues darting as if from the sneering mouths of snakes. Andrei dips a bucket of water from the trough and splashes the whole lot of them. They hiss once more then march away, just as if they’ve been horribly affronted, and they won’t give as much as the time of day to these two offending intruders.

  “He’s an old man,” Marie says.

  “Forty. You should at least think about it.” He points to all the buildings and the horses. “Look at this farm,” he says, and then winks at her.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Marie says, and she grabs the unwashed brush and throws it in Andrei’s face.

  “I give up,” he says, laughing, and then he pulls out a handful of long green grass growing beside the well. The colt is standing with his head hung over the top rail. Andrei runs to it. He feeds it the grass and he rubs his hand down the colt’s long nose.

  •••

  Later in the house, Mrs. Kuzyk gives orders. “We shouldn’t waste time. After you eat, I want Andrei to cut poplar branches. Ones with lots of leaves. Wasyl will show you.”

  Andrei spoons sour cream into his beet borshch, smears butter on a thick slice of bread, and then eats non-stop. In ten minutes he’s done eating and gone from the house, and soon runs back with an armful of branches higher than his head.

  Marie places the greenery over the doorway, Mrs. Kuzyk pointing all the while. “And here, Marusia,” she says. “The whitewash is dry enough.” She points to the walls in the east room. “String them along the ceiling. And here, I’ll show you.” With more green branches Mrs. Kuzyk frames one of the icons on the wall. “All of the pictures.”

  “I know,” Marie says. “We did the same with our house in our village.”

  “Don’t forget,” Mrs. Kuzyk says, “Bring your mother on Saturday.”

  “I know,” Marie says.

  Mrs. Kuzyk watches the way Marie arranges the branches, how she forms an arbour over the doorway. Marie doesn’t notice this, but the old lady has been observing all day, and when she examines the arbour, she nods her head and smiles.

  Mrs. Kuzyk has already planted kernels of wheat, barley, and oats in small pots, setting them on the sill of the window in each of the two rooms, and on the bench outside on the south wall of the house. These sprouts are for ornament and promise. Outside the wheat fields flourish in a sea of green. She stands in the centre of the east room, her plump arms folded across her chest. She surveys her finery, and Andrei senses what she’s thinking. If her seeds grow in pots planted in the week of Pentecost, then surely the Kuzyk fields will be blessed, and maybe son Wasyl will be blessed as well.

  •••

  Saturday there is no work because it is a church holiday. Saturday is the first day of the Green Holidays. Mama and Marie sit in places of honour at Mrs. Kuzyk’s table amid the greenery in the east room. Andrei and Mr. Kuzyk sit within sight and hearing distance, playing cards at a small table by the door.

  Mama presses her hand down her apron, smoothing out wrinkles real or imagined, eyes Marie up and down to confirm that she too is presentable. “You have bluing in the plaster, Mrs. Kuzyk.”

  “I think it holds up better in the rain,” Mrs. Kuzyk says. “It won’t wash away as easily.”

  “How is your son’s breathing?” Mama asks.

  “It’s the time of the year. The grass pollen is hard on Wasyl’s congestion. But only this time of year. Everything’s growing. Poor Wasyl’s all plugged up. But he’s strong otherwise. Like a twenty-year-old.”

  Mr. Kuzyk slams down a card. “Beat that!” he says to Andrei.

  Mrs. Kuzyk gets up off her bench and Mama attempts to do the same. Marie watches.

  “Sit, sit,” Mrs. Kuzyk says. “The kettle will be boiling. I’ll get it from the summer kitchen.”

  Mama gazes at the icons on the wall. She lifts a corner of the embroidered linen table cover. The chest is not built quite the same as the Baydas’. A metal hinge runs along the centre. There are two compartments. Mama lifts the lid closest to her and Marie swipes her hand across the table, pressing down on the linen and on her mother’s hand.

  Mrs. Kuzyk comes back into the room carrying a tray with a teapot and china cups, fresh cream and strawberries, thick slices of crusty bread and butter. She pours tea.

  “Take some strawberries in your bowl,” she says. “I picked them this morning. They are so sweet you hardly need sugar. You men have some too. Come and get it.”

  “After this hand,” Mr. Kuzyk says. “I’m giving the boy a good trimming. What do you say, Andrei?”

  “I’m going to try and put a halter on the colt before I go back to the field.”

  “You’ll need a halter first. There’s one hanging in the barn. It might be a little big, but you can cut another hole in the buckle strap.”

  Mama fills her bowl and Marie’s, adds a spoonful of sugar, and pours on thick cream. They both eat. Mrs. Kuzyk watches them.

  “What about yourself?” Mama asks as she spreads butter on bread, for herself and for Marie.

  “I had a big breakfast with Wasyl before you came.” Mama smiles and Mrs. Kuzyk smiles back. “Maybe just a little,” she says, and she fixes a bowl for herself, then dips bread into the mixture and eats. Not a word more is said until the bowls are empty, and then Mama says, “Good berries,” then more silence. Both mothers look at Marie, who stares at her fingers, fiddling with her apron.

  “Your daughter isn’t getting any younger,” Mrs. Kuzyk says.

  “No,” Mama says. “It’s getting the time when a young woman starts looking for a husband.”

  “Someone to look after her.”

  Mama smiles, nodding at Marie as if the prayers for a daughter’s future are about to be answered.

  “I want the best for my Marusia.”

  “Oh, by all means,” Mrs. Kuzyk says. “You know...” She pauses to fill their cups with tea, “I was wondering. It is about time for my son Wasyl to start thinking about a wife. Would you be so kind to have Marusia consider him?”

  Mr. Kuzyk breaks into a fit of coughing, covering his mouth with his red and white handkerchief.

  “Oh dear,” Mama says. “Do you hear that, Marusia?”

  “Of course I hear.” She wipes her eyes with her apron, and under her breath she whispers, “And I want to be called ‘Marie.’” Then she says, “Mama, you know what I think. You know Petrus...”

  “Petrus? What good is Petrus across the ocean?”

  “He said that someday he might come...”

  “And if he should ever come to Canada, what will he have for you? The shirt on his back?”

  “I want to talk to Tato first...and to Dido Danylo. I d
on’t want to get married. Andrei?” Marie stands up and takes one step toward him.

  She’s asking him. What does Andrei know about marriage, about what’s good or what’s bad for his sister? One thing he does know is that Mr. Kuzyk knows his horses. Andrei glances at Marie just for a moment, their eyes meeting. He hunches his shoulders and diverts his gaze back to the table. He takes a card from the top of the deck. It’s a deuce. Marie takes one more step forward, but Mr. Kuzyk starts rising from his chair. She steps sideways, then rushes past him out of the room and out of the house.

  Chapter 8

  The halter doesn’t work. The colt wants no part of it, and Andrei leaves from his week of work at Kuzyk’s in a downcast frame of mind. It takes a visit from Chi Pete to cheer him up. Chi Pete shows up the day after Pentecost and stays for two days. His mastery of Ukrainian is remarkable. Throughout these months of May and June, Gabriel has been drilling him to the point where he’s now able to converse with Andrei. The first afternoon of the visit, the two boys decide to roam the bush, hunting for signs of moose. Andrei isn’t sure what they’ll do if they see one; Chi Pete has come without a rifle.

  “Gabriel thought I better not take it,” Chi Pete says.

  They approach an open area in the forest, a large meadow with expanses of head-high willow saplings covering half of it, trails running through. A regular moose pasture.

  “Let’s separate here,” Chi Pete says. “Along each side, and we’ll meet at the other end. If we’re together, a moose might just stay ahead of us and we’ll never see him. This way I might scare him to you, or the other way around.”

  Brovko scurries between them, sniffing, back and forth on the trails. Andrei’s halfway around the meadow when the dog runs to him, then shoots off into the bush. In a few moments, Andrei hears a frenzy of barking. About fifty yards into the bush, the dog has stopped at the foot of a tree, where he stands on his hind legs yipping and yowling as if he has treed a cat.

  A bear cub nestles on a branch twelve feet off the ground, tiny eyes peering down at the barking dog. Andrei thinks to knock it down from the tree. He grabs a length of deadwood from the ground and pokes at the cub. It turns its head and bites at the stick. Claws scrape against bark, paws curling to hang on.

  “Chi Pete! Chi Pete!” Andrei yells. “Come quick! Over here in the bush!” Andrei thinks that he can capture the cub and take it home for a pet. He doesn’t realize the cub might have a mama close by. Just as Andrei begins to shinny up the tree, he hears the growl, and the further-away voice of Chi Pete.

  “Get down,” Chi Pete says, “and walk away slowly. Back up, and keep your eyes on the bear’s eyes.” Andrei turns around to face the mama bear, twenty feet away. The dog runs to it, barking, face to face, as if protecting Andrei. The bear’s paw swipes, rolling the dog in a tumble, hide torn open, whimpering. Chi Pete picks him up.

  “Slowly,” he says. They back out of the bush, step by step toward the meadow, the mama bear never taking her eyes from them, standing at the tree, under the cub. They make it to the meadow, and without words go on to the homestead where Mama can tend to the injured dog.

  The next morning the boys work up enough nerve to head back into the bush, without the dog, who is at home nursing his wounds. They hunt for grouse. All morning they walk, finding nothing. By noon they arrive at the big rock. Andrei reaches into his pocket. “I found this button the last time I was here,” Andrei says, “in one of these cracks.”

  “Let me see it.” Chi Pete rubs the brass with his fingers. “It’s from an army coat. Uncle Moise told me about shooting the redcoats at Fish Creek. Just down river from the ferry. Someone has left it here as an offering.”

  “You think so?” Andrei asks. He tells Chi Pete about the ghost he thought he saw earlier in the summer, moving in the willows at the bottom of the hill. It was a black shadow similar to the form he saw take the golden halo from around the cross on the burial mound at Zabokruky. He tells Chi Pete about the cup in the goatskin. “My dido has buried a talisman here. Should we dig it out?”

  “What’s that?”

  “A gold cup,” Andrei says. “Inside a bag. A Holy man sent it with us. It has a special power.”

  “We should leave it,” Chi Pete says. “Your grandfather made an offering to the spirits. And maybe you should put the button back.”

  “No,” Andrei says. “It’s mine.”

  Chi Pete shakes his head. For a while he doesn’t talk, and then he says that if it were up to him, he’d put the button back.

  “Finders keepers,” Andrei says.

  They walk downhill toward the river, a quarter of a mile down the winding coulee. They step across a beaver dam. Saskatoon berries hang from branches.

  “You know Snow Walker?” Andrei asks.

  Chi Pete shrugs. “I think I know where he lives. Gabriel says he darts back and forth from the hills, haunting up and down the river.”

  The river bottom stretches wide. The channel snakes around broad stretches of sand, forming shallow pools. The boys swim, then lie drying on the hot sand.

  “Snow Walker could be anywhere up from this shoreline,” Chi Pete says. “In any of these coulees.”

  The boys enter one of the narrow breaks that’s cut to the river. They follow a dry stream bed, the path of deer, coyotes, bears, and whatever other animals go down to the river to drink. Branches encroach from each side, here and there forming a canopy blotting out the sun. Willows grow, then farther up, chokecherry bushes, hawthorn, saskatoon, buffalo berry, and once in a while the gnarled figure of a red ash tree.

  To Andrei’s right, just off the trail, a fragment of red polka dot cloth dangles on a cluster of green chokecherries. All at once Andrei feels that he and Chi Pete don’t have this trail all to themselves. Further ahead, a strip of dried meat hangs from a branch.

  It’s at this spot that they hear the rattle, first Chi Pete, then Andrei.

  “Up there,” Chi Pete says. They gaze squinting through leaves and branches up the side of the coulee, directly at the sun. Part way up, in the arms of a tree different from the others, its trunk and branches gnarled and twisted, the sound of a rattle comes from right in the middle of the glint of sunlight. The rattle sounds again. Then everything’s silent. A chickadee lands on a leafy branch. It chirps then flits to another.

  They walk ahead another twenty feet. Half a dozen crows squawk and fly in circles above the massive jumble of a stick nest. Andrei turns to look at the ground behind him.

  “Chi Pete! Chi Pete!”

  Feet in rubber boots straddle the path. Canvas trousers are belted at the waist with a frayed rope. A fire-scorched tea can hangs from the belt. A checked shirt is tucked in. Arms spread open a dark suit jacket. A cap of white weasel skin clings to black hair. A weasel head drapes on each side of the man’s brow along the front of his ears. In his left hand, a rattle shakes. Attached with strips of rawhide to a red willow stick are four dewclaws from the front feet of a white-tailed deer.

  He talks in Cree to Chi Pete. Then he whistles through his teeth and shakes his rattle at Andrei.

  “Snow Walker wants to know about your grandpa, the old man with the rope of hair. He says to ask the Rope Head if he left the bag as a gift, or as a curse on the spirits? Has he given it to work for or against the spirit rock?”

  Andrei stares, not knowing what to say. He notices that Snow Walker turns away, avoiding eye contact. He steps around to the other side of Chi Pete and whispers in his ear. He shakes his rattle again, walking in a circle around Andrei.

  “Snow Walker wants you to tell the Rope Head not to pray from his knees, casting spells at the rock. Not to make the crosses of the French Black Robes. If he does, Snow Walker will turn the mischief back on the both of you. He wants to know if the power inside the bag is meant to work with, or against the power of Snow Walker and the rock.”

  The next moment he’s gone. Gabriel has told Andrei that Snow Walker was said to have the power to make himself invisible. But those were o
nly stories the old people told during the dark winter to scare the children. Andrei’s not sure what to make of it. In this summer forest, a deer can vanish just as quickly.

  July

  Chapter 9

  On a muggy July day, late in the afternoon, Tato and Dido come home with a wagon and team. The air hums with mosquitoes. The oxen swish their tails. They turn their heads around, their tongues swiping with sudden jerks at their backs. A smudge pot hangs from the wagon pole, a tin lard pail filled with smouldering green grass and wood chips. Dido walks beside the oxen, going from one side to the other wielding a switch of leafy poplar, swatting mosquitoes off them and the animal trailing behind, a sway-backed horse with white hair down its brow and over its eyes. The wagon stops in front of the primitive grass-roofed barn.

  “You’ve built a barn!” Tato says. “And what have we here?” Inside the open doorway, Marie is milking the cow.

  “From Mr. Kuzyk,” Andrei says. “She gives so much, we milk twice a day. I do it in the morning.”

  “Kuzyk? Who is Kuzyk?” From his perch on the wagon, Tato leans downward and to the side, directing a question to his wife. “Where would you find money to buy a cow?”

  “Do you mean Wasyl Kuzyk?” Dido asks. “We had a Wasyl Kuzyk in district Horodenka. One day five years ago at the market he was selling two horses. You remember Stefan? Could it be the same Wasyl Kuzyk?”

  “Yes,” Mama says. “He knows both of you. And we paid him nothing.”

  “How, nothing’?” Tato asks.