The Air Canada jet from Toronto touched down rather hard, but was soon slowing down smoothly and quickly as the pilot announced, “Welcome to Edmonton, ladies and gentlemen, where the temperature is five degrees Celsius and the time is 10:17 a.m.”
A man sitting near the centre of the plane adjusted his watch, waited until the seat-belt light went off, then stood up with the rest of the passengers and retrieved two items from the overhead bin. One was a small carry-on bag, the other a violin case. He appeared to be in his sixties, medium height, slender, greying hair, well dressed. With the violin case and bag in hand, he moved alone, to the baggage carousel where his larger suitcase soon arrived. Then, carrying the case and bag and pulling the suitcase, he made his way to the well-marked car rental section of the airport. The pre-arranged car rental went quickly and smoothly. He signed the one-day rental agreement dated October 24, 1989. He received a map and detailed instructions to his questions from the friendly young agent, which he highlighted in yellow.
Moments later, he was headed north toward the city centre and soon turned east on the highlighted White Mud Freeway. It was cool, but the sun was shining and the temperature was rising. A beautiful day in sunny Alberta for the end of October, he thought, and smiled to himself as he turned on to Highway 14 East-Wainwright. He noted the well-tended farms and recently combined stubble fields, some with large round bales of straw waiting to be picked up before the snow arrived. The farms gave way to acreages with large new homes, some with small horse barns close by, still within easy commuting distance to the city he reckoned.
After the junction with Highway 21, north to Fort Saskatchewan, south to Camrose, the land became more rolling and more treed. Poplars and birch trees growing tall and straight, almost bare of the bright yellow fall leaves that, here and there, still clung stubbornly to the branches. Crew-cut hayfields wound between clumps of poplar trees or sat silently on straight rectangular fields bordered by more poplars.
After a sign that announced “Welcome to the County of Beaver” the highway straightened and more harvested stubble fields appeared. The fields were larger, the land more level and, a short distance from the highway, a lone red combine moved along, snail-paced, a grey-white cloud of dust trailing behind it.
Approaching Tofield, he became aware, as a long CN freight train drew closer, that the highway now ran parallel to, and right alongside, the railroad tracks. The railroad, he had found out, was completed in 1909. The highway was built much later, in the 1950s. The railroad was the catalyst that opened this part of Alberta to eager farm settlers from eastern Canada, the U.S. and all over Europe, with the promise of cheap, or even free, homestead land. The dangling carrot was the guarantee of abundant crops of wheat and other grains, now so easy to send to market on the railway's new main line.
He passed Tofield and the lone grain elevator on the siding at Shonts, then new elevators and a large bulk fertilizer complex beside the rail line at the small town of Ryley. Its sign proclaimed it to be the centre and headquarters of Beaver County, with the enticing ending to come and “Live the life of Ryley.” Now it was flat farmland interrupted by the occasional slough of water, mud, cattails, and slough grass. Here and there, beef cattle grazed in pastures or on recently combined stubble fields. There was little traffic and even less human activity that he could see as he drove.
“Poe” read the sign: one ancient, lone, faded, brickish-red, grain elevator complete with the plank walkway to the old, long-empty elevator agent’s office. Then a large cattail-circled, water-filled slough on both sides of the highway and a gentle curve brought the highway back alongside the railway tracks with more grain elevators visible in the distance.
It was the small village of Holden. He slowed down as he approached the flashing yellow intersection light and turned in towards its centre. He crossed two sets of railroad tracks; the first was the siding that passed beside a row of grain elevators located on both sides of the road leading to the village. A forlorn, long-vacant machinery dealership was on his left as he slowly crept along; another on his right, old, neglected, unused, forgotten. What had they been like in 1935 or earlier, when his parents would have driven here, right where he was driving? Driving with horses and a wagon just emptied of grain, or a horse and buggy to deliver and sell their eggs and cream. Likely he and his younger sister would have been along, looking around, excited at the prospect of an ice cream cone at the Chinese café, or perhaps a candy at Liden’s General Store. He knew it must have happened, but he couldn’t remember many distinct details. The rest were vague and cloudy memories.
He drove slowly to the end of town, past the empty lumber and hardware store, one still-used grocery store, and the much newer post office with the flag on the pole in front. The old theatre—he could see that that was what it used to be—was now, according to the new sign above its doors, the Regional Arts Centre. Further ahead was another large new complex, the town’s new skating, hockey, and curling rink. He turned around, then west at the war monument at the centre intersection, a monument of a soldier standing with a rifle in his hand. Names of the local men who died, casualties of both World Wars, were inscribed on two sides. He realized that even the monument would not have been there when his family lived here. He passed the white, onion-domed, Ukrainian Catholic Church, well kept and still in use, and on to the school. It was a small, newer complex built across from the old school. He turned around and drove back, again passing the cenotaph in the centre of town, and drove east. The Masonic Lodge of yesteryear had become the Holden Museum. There was the small United Church, freshly painted white, and more older, neat homes. At the end of the street, with farm fields in sight, he turned right and passed an original-looking farmyard with an old hexagon Venetian blind, wooden-slatted windmill head, just like the one that had been on their farm—he could still remember. Then a well-maintained, stuccoed Roman Catholic Church and, just a few houses further, the white Lutheran Church that their family had attended. He stopped the car and walked slowly to the door. It was locked.
Back on Main Street, he angle-parked the same as other cars and pick-up trucks in front of the Country Kitchen restaurant and went inside. Several tables of local men or women sat around the tables or in the booths along one wall. They all regarded the stranger with short-lived interest, then went back to their conversation about local events and people. There was considerable laughter.
He found a small table, sat down and studied the walls and his surroundings. On a high shelf, well above the booths, were old and antique pop bottles, but also some beer and medicine bottles. He recognized some and smiled as he remembered the unpleasant taste inside an old Buckley’s Cough Syrup bottle. It was a nice collection, possibly added to occasionally by some of the owner’s regular customers.
Soon the proprietor, cook, and waiter, who was about his age, was at his side with a single-sheeted, plastic-covered, somewhat-stained menu. “Passing through?” he asked.
“Here just for a short stop,” was the man’s reply. “My folks had a farm a few miles east of town, across from the old CN water tower. Left here in 1935, when I was 11, and moved to Vancouver.”
“Right in the middle of the Depression,” the waiter replied, “I don't remember everything, but those were tough years—the Depression. Well, the town hasn’t changed all that much. It’s dying, now. Everybody’s shopping in Vegreville or Edmonton or Camrose. No machinery dealers in town anymore and there’s good paved roads. It was probably a good move, going to Vancouver, instead of sticking it out here. Or maybe you’d have become the progressive young farmer and be farming a few sections around here now, farming with your son. Me, I’ve been here 18 years. Plan to sell soon. I’ll have enough for a little house in Camrose or Wetaskiwin or a town close by. Got relatives in Wetaskiwin,” he added.
The man glanced at the menu. There was only breakfast and lunch—no dinner at the Country Kitchen. He ordered the soup (beef vegetable) and a toasted cheese sandwich. He realized how hungry he had become since having breakfast in Toronto quite a few hours ago.
The soup and sandwich arrived, “I gave you extra because you’re a former local. Born here, right?” The stranger nodded a reply. The soup was hearty and good; the sandwich too was substantial. He ate, paid with a tip and went back to the car.
East of Holden was a gently rolling landscape also with harvested grain fields on both sides of the highway. Then he noticed the sign beside the highway. “Water Tower Road” it read. “That wasn't here in ’68,” he mused. That had been the year he had brought his own family, his wife and two daughters, the eldest just graduated from High School, to show them his birthplace and where he had spent the first 11 years of his life.
He turned right on Water Tower Road, which immediately crossed a small newer bridge. Was it a creek, or a man-made drain of the unusually large slough to the right, which supplied the water for the railroad water tower? Water that was needed to fill the tanks of the steam engines that pulled the trains, a water tower every 40 or 50 miles of railroad track. Likely he and his sister had played in that spot. It was very close to the old farmyard.
He pulled into the driveway leading to the old abandoned yard. The wire gate was closed. He left the car and, out of habit, locked it. He smiled and unlocked it. There was no one around anywhere. He closed the gate behind him.
There was really only one farm building, or part of it, remaining—the pump house. It was a small building with weathered grey boards and parts of the windmill tower frame, four broken and splintered 4x4s angling skyward together out of the roof. The windmill head with the slatted wooden vanes, like the one he had seen in Holden, was gone.
He walked slowly to where the house had been, not far from the weathered pump house. All that remained was the cellar hole, where his mother had stored the vegetables from her garden as well as all of her home canning. An old deep-freeze had been dumped into the cellar hole, tipped in at an angle. The lid of the freezer lay beside it, half covered with dirt. Beside the lid was a broken glass mason jar, almost certainly belonging to his mother. He contemplated retrieving it, looked around for a stick or pole but there wasn’t any. There were other jars, complete, unbroken, perhaps other relics also, but he had no shovel, and his shoes and clothes were the ones he planned to wear on the plane back to Vancouver in the evening, so he abandoned the idea of digging and searching.
Further away were two old wooden prairie granaries, weathered grey like the pump house boards, long unused. Certainly they were around since that era; perhaps they were built before he was born, in the 1920s when times were better, when it had rained, when the outlook was so promising. But where was the barn, or the hen house? Only prairie grass grew in every direction he looked.
He became aware of a freight train approaching from the east. He watched and waited. The engineer blew his whistle as he approached the crossing. The man waved at the engineer and the engineer waved back at the well-dressed man standing alone at an abandoned farmyard. It was a long freight train of grain and potash cars of various colours. He waited until the entire train had passed by.
He walked back to the car. He had planned to walk the mile and three-quarters to the school, just as he had walked it for the first year before his dad got him the pony. He checked his watch and decided to drive. Two farms lay between the old yard and the school. They both sported newer houses and painted buildings. One had a large 1940s or 50s hip-roofed barn, painted blue; both had large steel machinery storage sheds. Each had long rows of new shiny round steel grain storage buildings, replacing old wooden granaries like the ones back at the yard.
The road sloped gently up to the old school site. Only a right angle row of spruce trees bordered the southwest corner where the two gravel country roads intersected. Likely the trees were planted by one of the teachers, for the small teacher’s house or teacherage had stood in that corner. The almost square schoolhouse with the cottage-type roof and the sign above the door that had read “West Bruce School” was gone, as well as the teacherage. The school barn, the outhouses (one for the boys, one for the girls), the coal-shed—all were gone. Only the border of trees remained. He remembered the school barn where the boys or girls tied their ponies, or the horse that pulled the buggy or cutter if there were several children from one family attending school. Gone was the coal shed with its blocks of coal for the large potbellied stove that heated the school. He wondered how the coal had got there. There was no large grassy playing area where the baseball diamond used to be, just a recently harvested stubble field.
Then he noticed something new, more recent—a steel, black billboard near the corner of the intersection beside the spruce trees. It read “West Bruce School 1921-1955.” Below were the family surnames followed by the names of the children who attended. There were about a dozen family names and sure enough, to his surprise, there was his name in the correct alphabetical spot. He smiled, wondering who had put it up. He walked back to his car, brought back his camera and took a picture.
He drove back to the old farm site and parked the car again in front of the wire gate. He opened the trunk and took out the violin case, set it down on the ground, opened the gate, picked up the violin case and walked in, this time not closing the gate behind him. The farmyard was now part of a pasture—there were no cows around, and it wouldn’t take long. The day was still pleasant and the sun was still feebly warm, but soon it would be gone and the night would be a lot colder. But in two hours or so he would be back at the Edmonton Airport in plenty of time to have a meal and catch the last flight of the day home to Vancouver.
It was a plan that had come to him over time. His final concert with the Vancouver Symphony in Toronto, arranging a different flight back than all of his friends in the orchestra, a flight to Edmonton, a day for this trip, then back to Edmonton for the flight home. Retirement at 65, and still in fairly good health, he was planning to continue teaching violin at least for a while, but with both girls married and on their own and his wife still working, it wasn’t a necessity. Then more, wider travels with his wife, but first came this idea, this closing. It had been forming and growing in his mind. It was something he wanted to, had to, felt obligated to do.
He stood again with the violin case in his hand near the old cellar hole where the house had stood, and he remembered it all clearly.
· · ·
He had heard him before he had seen him, when he came riding his pony home from school. He put the pony into his stall in the barn and hung up the bridle carefully as his dad had taught him. He came back outside. It was the sound of the chopping of wood coming from their big, very recently sawn wood pile. It wasn’t his father, for today he was helping saw the poplar poles into firewood at another neighbour’s place, because it took three men to saw the poplar poles into a winter’s supply of wood.
The wood chopper was in his shirt sleeves, swinging his father’s axe easily, steadily, accurately. His heavy red-checkered mackinaw and his big canvas knapsack lay on the ground behind him. It was cold, mid-November, but he was working steadily so he didn’t need the mackinaw. He was stacking the chopped wood carefully into two rows, leaning slightly together for stability. The rows ended in a criss-cross grid pattern. Chopping and stacking. Chopping and stacking. He was on his third row.
The wood chopper saw him, stopped chopping, and smiled. He looked to be older than his father. He had a black toque, and a black beard, slightly sprinkled with grey. The boy didn’t smile back, watched him for a few more minutes, then turned and went into the house. His mother and sister had heard the wood chopper and had seen him too.
When his father came home, before he milked the cows, he came into the house and said to his mother, in German, “This one is different.” He was referring to the other transients or hobos who were riding the rails across Canada, looking for work. When the trains stopped for water at the water tower, they sometimes came to their house, asking politely for something to eat, before hopping on to the freight train again.
“This one's different,” Dad said. “He doesn’t ask, he doesn’t say anything. He just saw the new wood pile, took the axe and started chopping. And he’s piled the wood like I’ve never seen wood piled before.”
Then he said, “Come on, son, let’s go milk the cows.”
When we had finished milking, the stranger was still chopping. It was just starting to get dark and cold. Really cold.
We carried the milk back to the house for separating. Dad said to Mother, “l think we should give him supper. What do you think?”
Mother said, “I thought about that. I know that’s what he wants anyway.We’ve got enough.”
The stranger came into the house behind Dad, but when he talked and said, "Hello. Bonjour. From Quebec,” we knew he didn't speak English very well. But neither did Dad or Mother.
Dad said grace in German, as always. I saw the wood chopper make the sign of the cross and say something, almost silently, in French.
We ate. The man looked at Mother several times and said, “Good,” and nodded to her, smiling. He ate quite a bit. I was very quiet, so was my sister. Dad asked if he was from Montreal. “No,” he replied, “Nort village. Small village,” he said, with a different accent.
Right after supper, while Mom was clearing the table and starting to do dishes, the wood chopper pointed to the violin lying on the old couch in our little living room. He could have barely seen it with only the coal oil lamp on the kitchen table. It belonged to an old German fellow from Holden. It was one of his violins. He had just started giving me lessons a few weeks earlier, on Saturdays. The fee was two dozen eggs that Mom sent along with Dad and me. Dad really wanted me to learn to play the violin.
Dad tried to explain about the violin, in broken English, and pointed to me. The wood chopper nodded, then pointed to the violin again and then to himself, nodding, questioning. Dad understood, and brought the violin and bow to the wood chopper, sitting at the kitchen table. He took it and turned it over slowly, carefully. He smiled, plucked at the strings, and tuned them twice, tilting his head slightly, listening, thinking, tuning again, retuning.
Then the wood chopper stood up. The violin came up quickly to his chin. He smiled. The bow touched the strings and he played, his big black work shoes tapped, his body moved and he played. Just as easily and smoothly as he had handled the axe, his arm handled the bow. On and on he played as we all watched, transfixed and silent. Music and melodies we had never heard before. French-Canadian folk songs and reels and jigs and waltzes. On and on he played.
When he finally stopped and sat down, everyone was silent for a long moment.
“Very nice,” said my father, “Very nice, very gut. Now, can you play hymn? Play church song?”
The wood chopper looked confused, not comprehending.
“Church song. Hymn,” my father said again. Then he awkwardly made the sign of the cross, and he put his hands together in front of his chest, like an act of prayer. We were Lutherans. I had never seen my father cross himself.
Suddenly the wood chopper understood. He nodded and he thought solemnly. Then he stood up straight and tall and carefully tucked the violin under his chin and gently brought the bow up to the strings. He played a song, a melody, haunting and beautiful. Long and slowly and reverently he played it, a melody unfamiliar to us all.
When he was done, my father stood up and touched the stranger’s shoulder.
“Very, very nice, very beautiful,” he said gently. He paused, then said “Now you sleep here. You chop wood, you eat, you play violin very gut. Now you sleep here, on floor, in our house.”
Mother arrived with a heavy blanket and spread it on the floor where Dad had moved away the chairs. The stranger bowed to Dad and Mother. “Dank you, merci beaucoup, dank you,” he said quietly.
“Put more wood in stove,” Dad pointed and gestured. “Cold night outside.”
In the morning, when we got up, the stranger was gone. Gone without a sound. He had heard a train stopping for water, and in the dark he was gone to ride the rails west. I wished he still would have been there.
· · ·
The man standing beside the cellar hole reached down and took the violin out of the case. Facing the railroad and where the old water tower used to be, he stood straight and tall, carefully tucked the violin under his chin and gently brought the bow up to the strings.
“Thank you for the inspiration, my French Canadian friend. Thank you,” he said out loud. Then he played. Strongly and confidently he played the song. And for the second time in 55 years Ave Maria floated through the air, across a forlorn yard, over the highway, across the railway tracks and beyond—the music carried and faded away in the breeze. This time, no one else was around to hear it.
The man put the violin back into its case, picked it up, and walked slowly back to the car.