A Strange Kind of Comfort Read online




  Copyright © Gaylene Dutchyshen, 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Publisher: Scott Fraser | Acquiring editor: Rachel Spence | Editor: Jess Shulman

  Cover designer: Sophie Paas-Lang

  Cover image: istockphoto.com/prill

  Printer: Webcom, a division of Marquis Book Printing Inc.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: A strange kind of comfort / Gaylene Dutchyshen.

  Names: Dutchyshen, Gaylene, 1958- author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2019010967X | Canadiana (ebook) 20190109688 | ISBN 9781459745452 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459745469 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459745476 (EPUB)

  Classification: LCC PS8607.U877 S77 2020 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

  We 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 Ontario, through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada.

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  For my parents, Michael and Rosalene Maksymetz, with love and gratitude

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE: 2016

  SARAH

  CAROLINE

  SARAH

  CAROLINE

  SARAH

  CAROLINE

  PART TWO: CAROLINE, 1957

  MAY

  JUNE

  JULY

  AUGUST

  SEPTEMBER

  OCTOBER

  PART THREE: SARAH, 1975 - 1976

  SEPTEMBER

  OCTOBER

  NOVEMBER

  MAY

  JUNE

  PART FOUR: 2016

  CAROLINE

  SARAH

  CAROLINE

  SARAH

  CAROLINE

  SARAH

  CAROLINE

  SARAH

  CAROLINE

  SARAH

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  The chudesnytsia blends a tea of burdock root, raspberry leaves, and honey, then rests in her rocking chair by the wood stove while she sips. Usually the bitter brew eases the pain deep in her bones but today it does little to relieve her suffering. Instead, the pungent odour rising from the steam carries her off to a murky, twilight place where she drifts between wakefulness and dreams.

  She is home again in the village at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, the beloved grandmother she left behind trudging slowly up the path to a whitewashed hut, clutching the hem of a crisp white apron. It droops like a hammock with the weight of a cabbage the size of a grown man’s head. And there is her mother, long dead, retching in agony as the SS Bulgaria rocks on an angry, endless sea. She sees herself, a small and frightened child wearing a grimy dress, woollen stockings sagging at the knees, peering up from a wooden bunk in the hull of the ship. She feels the crush of women’s rough skirts against her cheek as soiled babies howl and anxious women fret over their husbands’ decisions while waiting, waiting, at the port of Halifax for papers to be looked at and documents filed.

  She wakes with a start to a muffled tapping she thinks might be the barn door, unhooked and flapping in the wind, or perhaps the child upstairs, not yet asleep, bumping her feet against the wall. As she comes fully awake she realizes it is someone knocking at her door. She hoists herself up, shuffles over, and opens it to find on her stoop a young, round-shouldered woman holding the hand of a child. The boy is thin and pale, with hair the colour of acorns and haunted brown eyes she senses he is afraid to close at night. The woman’s face, too, bears the strain of sleepless nights. She takes a step forward as a lone wolf howls in the distant hills, a keening cry that startles the boy. “I was told you could help my child.” She falters over the Ukrainian words and the chudesnytsia thinks for a moment how like her own daughter this young woman is, the words so unforgiving on her tongue.

  The chudesnytsia ushers them in and gestures to the table, inviting them to sit. The boy looks around the room with wary eyes, taking in the small jars of garnet-coloured jam lined up on the cupboard, the wooden print of the Last Supper hanging on the wall, the flickering candle on a small side table.

  “It’s a’right. You tell to me in English. What it is wrong with this little one?”

  The young woman seems relieved she does not have to struggle to explain her son’s condition and she speaks slowly, taking care with each word. “He doesn’t sleep. He can’t go a night without waking, screaming out for me. I rush in to his room and he is so scared he can’t stop shaking, yet when I ask, he says he doesn’t know what scares him.”

  In hushed tones, the old woman probes, wanting to know if the boy had been ill before the nightmares began. Had anyone died? A grandparent? A beloved dog? Had he been frightened by something? The boy’s mother tells her how difficult these last months have been, lights blazing in every room throughout the night, the sheets tangled at the foot of his bed. The child has begged his mother not to leave him and cries when she does. The old woman nods, trying to make sense of it. She is familiar with such cases and has had success in the past. A cleansing read with her wax and holy water to determine the source of his buried fear together with a tincture from her wildflowers, berries, or bark should rid the child of whatever torments him.

  The boy drifts to the small table with the sputtering candle and fingers a linen cloth, embellished with red and black cross-stitch, draped across a holy icon of the Virgin Mary. The boy leans in, as though for a closer look, and, with a gentle puff, blows out the candle.

  “Oh,” his mother says, bringing one hand to her mouth, “I told you not to touch anything.”

  “It’s a’right,” the old woman says. “We light again.” She picks up the candle and a small wicker basket from the floor next to the table and holds it out to the boy. “You help me to carry?”

  In the basket are a black-rimmed white enamel cup and bowl, a packet of matches, a smooth-edged knife, a small vial of water, and a lump of amber-coloured wax. The boy carries the basket, gently, as though it holds eggs he might break, and places it on the table. From a pail next to the sink, the old woman scoops a dipper of water, hand-drawn from her well, and fills the bowl.

  “I ready. We start,” she says, cupping the boy’s chin with her right hand. The sign of Jesus had appeared on the morning of her sixteenth birthday. She had awakened to find three crosses on her palm, pulsing brilliantly red, as though they had been carved there with a pocket knife during the night. Her mother took their appearance as a sign her daughter was ready to learn the incantations for cleansing and healing that she had learned f
rom her own mother — the same rituals handed down through generations of women in her family and brought with them to Canada. The crosses are barely visible now and she wonders if her power has diminished with them, but she reminds herself the healing comes from God’s grace and the unwavering faith of those who come.

  “Do you believe?” She must ask the question, but she knows the boy is too young. What does a child of six know of faith or God? He says nothing and averts his gaze so she turns to his mother, whose eyes brim with hope. “And you. Do you believe?”

  The young woman nods, although the look in her eyes is wary, as though she has come not because she truly believes in the power of the Holy Spirit but out of a deep and troubling desperation. The old woman shifts the boy’s chair, scraping it across the wooden floor, and arranges herself in front of him, facing east to harness the power of the rising sun as the ritual demands, although night has almost fallen. A sudden, heavy rain begins to thrum against the roof as she lights the candle and places a lump of beeswax in the enamel cup. Holding the cup over the candle, she adds a single clove of garlic and a few drops of holy water to the bowl. The scent of the melting wax brings to mind golden honey dripping from a comb and the hum of a hundred buzzing bees.

  “Vo im’ia Otsa, I Syna, I Sviatoho dukha, amin.” In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Three times she makes the sign of the cross, preparing herself to receive God’s grace. A whisper of doubt troubles her mind and she steels herself against it, grasping the knife in her left hand. She picks up the bowl and holds it over the boy’s head. He glances up at her and she senses his misgivings, too, but she closes her eyes and begins the ancient Ukrainian incantation.

  “I take to the head, to the blood, to all the joints, to adjure, to summon this fear of fears; From the north and from the south, I summon you with God’s lips, with God’s words; And the sister-stars …”

  The sacred words spill easily from her lips. The power of the Trinity is within her — she feels it pulse with each pounding beat of her heart. The knife glints in the candlelight as she thrusts it toward the heavens, slicing the air and casting out the child’s fear with the same swift strokes she uses when scraping the skin of a butchered hog.

  She continues to chant in her mother tongue. “I release you beyond the mountains, beyond the seas … disappear and vanish. I release you where people do not walk, where roosters do not crow, where the wind does not blow. Be gone! May you be buried and disappear.

  “Chrevonu krov ne pyi, bile kilo ne sushy, zhovtu kist ne lupai.”

  Do not drink red blood, dehydrate a white body, or strip a yellow bone.

  The knife clatters to the table as she reaches for the melted wax. The candle flame barely flickers as she pours the thick wax and watches it move like something alive across the surface of the water, spreading until it blooms into shapes she must read. After a few moments, the shapes reveal themselves. Flames. Little greedy tongues of fire. Easy enough to see. But what confounds her is the tendril curling up and away from the heart of the blaze, stretching up toward the ceiling, unlike anything she has ever seen. Neither smoke nor flame, but separate. A tether, she senses, connecting the child to her in some way, to an event yet to happen in the distant future.

  There is a sudden loud thump from upstairs and the boy and his mother look up, startled by the sound. The girl has fallen out of bed, the chudesnytsia thinks, and is about to explain the presence of someone else in the house when she notices the boy. His brow is smooth, his eyes clear, free of anguish, as he gazes up at the ceiling, restored.

  PART ONE

  2016

  SARAH

  The ancient elm and the stone pile beneath it are all that remain of the fence line that once marked the boundary between their place and the Webbs’. For years it was Eldon Webb who fiercely guarded the tree but, after the old man died, it was Sarah who stood her ground and refused to let Jack cut it down. At one time, Jack and his father wanted to clean up the fence line; tear out the fence posts, knock down the tree, bury the stone pile. Open things up, make it easier for the bigger equipment they were running these days. But old man Webb wouldn’t allow it. He said the fence kept the Bilyks over where they belonged and hell would freeze over before he’d let them cut down that tree. With every passing year, storm-scattered branches and quack grass crept farther into both fields. As soon as old man Webb died, before he was even cold in the ground, Jack ripped out the rotting posts, knocked down the poplar saplings, gathered up the deadfall, dragged it into a pile, and set it all on fire. He picked up the rusted strands of barbed wire and harrowed the ashes, reclaiming a couple of acres and seeding them to wheat, but at the edge of the field, because Sarah insisted, he left that elm tree standing.

  Over forty feet tall, it has a canopy as wide and welcoming as a wedding tent with a natural hollow at its feet, lush with twitch grass and wildflowers: pink columbine, star-flowered Solomon’s seal, droopy-headed bluebells. Sarah likes to come and listen to the nearby sound of water splashing over the river rocks and the twitter of birds. There’s a peace she finds in this spiritual place, far enough away from the roar of aeration fans and equipment in the yard. It reminds her of her grandmother’s place tucked up against the foot of the mountain, where she spent so much time as a child.

  She comes often, scavenging the stone pile for rocks of every shape and size, hauling them home in the box of her pickup truck. Flat ones of limestone for building garden walls and as many smaller, coloured ones as she can lift to place among her prized lilies and roses.

  Today, dappled May sunshine filters through the leaves, spotting Misty’s golden coat as she dozes, her head nuzzled on Sarah’s thigh. Misty’s heart belongs to Sarah, although she was a gift for Toni’s sixth birthday. The girls squealed in delight when Misty poked her nose out of the cardboard box that morning. They promised to feed her and bathe her and teach her to sit, but it was Sarah who took on Misty’s care, comforting her that first night when she whimpered for her mother. Jack found Sarah in the morning, lying on the mud room floor, fast asleep with the new puppy dozing on her chest. He said it reminded him of the way she used to be with the girls, asleep in the reclining chair with a baby nestled between her breasts.

  Toni is home from university for the summer; the house seems full once again. After she left, Sarah thought she’d never get used to the silence, never survive the absence of her last-born child. After thirty-two years with the frantic bustle of three girls growing up, what would she do? For the first few months, she kept listening for a door to slam or a blow-dryer to roar to life, but, over time, she grew used to the familiar sounds of the empty house. The whir of the refrigerator and the click of Misty’s nails on the floor. In busy seasons, with Jack working sixteen-hour days, she often goes a whole week speaking hardly a word. She keeps the radio and television turned off during the day as she goes about her chores, relishing the solitude of her peaceful world.

  Misty lifts her head, sniffs the air, growls low in her throat. Sarah catches a vague odour on the breeze, not unlike the smell of spoiled meat.

  “What is it, girl?”

  Misty pads toward the open field, tilts her head, looks back then barks. Sensing Misty wants her to follow, Sarah walks to the edge of the shade and stops beside the stone pile.

  There is a small, pie-shaped field to the east that tapers into a shallow ravine where the field ends, and beyond that, the Makwa River, named by the Ojibway for the black bears that roam the aspen parkland. The small field had once been part of a pasture, the river a natural barrier the cattle wouldn’t willingly cross. Now it’s a meadow where Jack cuts and bales hay every year for the cattle.

  Two calves have gone missing from their herd in the last week. Jack hoped they had just wandered off though a gap in the fence and would find their way back, as they often did. But their neighbour Shorty Cornforth is missing a calf, too, while the Nychuks have lost two calves and an old cow. Jack, Shorty, and Jim Nychuk have discussed the possibilit
y of rustlers. They heard about some thefts in the Interlake north and east of here; prices go up, it happens, but no one has seen strange trucks and trailers on the country roads, and everyone’s been watching since the cattle started to disappear.

  Even though the cows are now pastured three miles away, Sarah thinks it’s possible one of the missing calves has lost its way and ended up along the riverbank. She crosses the meadow and follows Misty into the ravine, sidestepping her way down, keeping her balance by grabbing hold of the branches of squat cranberry bushes and willow saplings as a shower of pebbles rains down. The sun gleams off the river as she makes her way down the steep hill toward it. She glances back over her shoulder at a stealthy rustle coming from the brush and is relieved to hear the familiar chit-chit-chit of a grey squirrel. Misty is poking her nose in the fallen leaves, snuffling and pawing in a frenzied way, when Sarah catches a fleeting movement from the corner of her eye. Misty, lips raised, ears flattened, barks. A primal, guttural sound Sarah’s never heard from her before. As Misty prepares to lunge, Sarah grabs hold of the dog’s scruff and holds her back.

  There, at the bottom of the ravine along the river’s edge on an outcropping of pebbled beach, is a Red Angus calf, weeks old, viciously gutted through the gaping hole where its tail should be. Its throat is torn open, too, and blood, black and tar-thick, soaks out of it onto the gravel. A swarm of blue-bellied flies hovers and buzzes above the rotting carcass and Sarah gags at the putrid stench and gruesome sight of it. She doesn’t need to look more closely at the blood-stained tag in its ear to know the calf is theirs.

  * * *

  Jack is working in the far corner of the field. Sarah can see the dust he’s stirring up as he zigzags around with the chore tractor, aiming for rocks poking from the dirt and raking them up with the stone picker. Much of their farmland lies along the shoreline of Lake Agassiz, an ancient glacial lake that once covered most of Manitoba. Remnants of rocks and stones left behind when the prehistoric lake retreated are churned up out of the earth by the tiller each fall. Every spring they must be swept up and discarded, leaving the field ready for planting.