Read Online When Alice Lay Down With Peter by Margaret Sweatman - Free Book Online

was a pretty good swimmer. Mum saw this with a sharp pang of love; there really was nothing the man couldn’t do. The soldiersthrew stones into the water until at last one struck him. He sank, came up once with blood on his scalp, and then went under. My mother called his name. But he didn’t reappear. The rain fell so hard it made splashes on the surface.
    They turned and circled my mother. No one said anything. Mum bolted, but a soldier pinned her to the ground, surprised to find her so bulky, and I was squashed by his weight. Just then, my earache got terrible, and the soldier, though underfed, was tall and the pressure of his weight made a funnel for rainwater from Mum’s hat brim into my ear, and I began a howl that inspired my mother to sing, “Come, let us to the Lord our God with contrite hearts return…” The soldier pulled back, my mother bellowed, “… and though his arm be strong to smite, ’tis also strong to save.” The soldier knew the song; he heard the brogue somewhere in her multicultural repertoire, for though she seldom spoke one dialect in particular, when she was scared the Scot in her came out. He backed off and scrambled to his feet. Mum stood up, holding her song like a gun.
    The poor soldiers were perilously close to sobriety (they’d be nearly two days without relief, for the saloons in Winnipeg had been cleaned right out and they’d have to wait till Monday for a wagon from Pembina). Everybody had a hangover. Mum stepped on the soldiers’ toes, jiggled me with sharp pats to the backside. “All people that on earth do dwell”—her brogue a tonic of sulphur and molasses—“sing to the Lord with cheerful voice!” The soldiers, headache-shriven, picked themselves out of the mud and began to file by. You’d expect them to drop a penny in her hat. Mum pursued them, holding me before her as if I were a votive candle, bawling, “Him to serve with mirth, his praises forth to tell!”
    At the fallen body of the Métisse the men stopped and gave a little bow, and the woman seemed to be waking up, as if their departure were lifting a spell. The sobering soldiers took the same road their brave leader had taken just an hour before. They walked with the indifference of people too ill to care. My mother hummed her hymn and patted my bum nervously, watching them go. Dad was dead. And the Métisse… she turned to the woman. A beauty, the mix of French and Cree, dark bony features, older than my mother by about ten years, standing up in pain. There was a matter-of-fact quality to her movements, and my mother, who could not survive my father’s death, was swamped by dread. It was raining again. Everything had to move forward, was already on its way to the impossible future.
    “Okay,” the woman said with the lilt of French. She looked at Mum with tolerant distaste. She shook off my mother’s hand. “Don’t. I’ll be okay.” She looked around. “What have you done with the little boy?”
    In her mind’s eye, my mother saw the grey moth upon the red spruce. “I’m positive,” she said. Always stubborn, she reached again for the woman. She hoped to rid herself of awe. She pulled her to the bush. “He’s here. Somewhere.”
    The Métisse said, “Shut up.” But she kept my mother’s hand in hers. “Listen.” It took a minute to hear anything, but then gradually the sound of rain. And the voice of the child near by. “There,” he said to a couple of frogs in his pocket. The women were rather shy, watching him. The Métisse touched his hair, lifted her eyebrows when he showed off his catch.
    “He’s not really mine,” she said. “I found him. He got left.”
    He smiled, self-conscious, coy.
    “What is your name?” my mother asked him.
    “Eli,” he said. He looked out the corner of his eye. My mother felt afraid for him. He seemed to feel he was fibbing about his own name. But the Métisse brushed the hair from his forehead and murmured,
“D’accord
. It’s okay. Eli is