Voice of the Valley

Voice Of

The Valley

SHEENA KOOPS

ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

Text copyright © 2006 Sheena Koops

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Big Yellow Taxi copyright 1966-69 Siquomb Publishing Company. Singer/songwriter: Joni Mitchell; Album: Ladies of the Canyon, May 1970.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Koops, Sheena, 1967-

Voice of the valley / Sheena Koops.

ISBN 1-55143-514-4

I. Title.

PS8621.O66V63 2006     jC813’.6    C2006-903099-5

First published in the United States, 2006

Library of Congress Control Number: 2006927981

Summary: A multi-layered coming-of-age story inspired by the controversial flooding of Saskatchewan’s Souris Valley.

Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Design and typesetting: Doug McCaffry

Cover illustration: Emily Carrington

Orca Book Publishers

PO Box 5626 Station B

Victoria, BC Canada

V8R 6S4

Orca Book Publishers

PO Box 468

Custer, WA USA

98240-0468

www.orcabook.com

www.sheenakoops.com

Printed and bound in Canada

09 08 07 06 • 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedicated to my students:

past perfect, present perfect, future perfect;

Made possible by my parents:

Thanks for all the fish;

In memory of the valley:

Nenasni ha.

There was great sorrow in the song and great joy, also, that the privilege of sorrow had not yet been cast from the people who sang it.

Jane Urquhart, Away

Contents

To Stacy

Above Her Valley

Beneath Her Bridge

At Home

From the Farm

In the Dirt

By the River

Through a Cactus Patch

In Archaeology 101

On the Way To Town

On Saturday Morning

Under the Sun

At the Island

Between Interviews

Around the Awl

On the Veranda

Against the Pump House

Under the Clouds

After the Rain

At Stacy’s

From Stacy

Under Conscription

Inside a Huddle

On the Six O’Clock News

In a Dam Rumble

Under the Stars

Within the Briefcase

Against the Rock

Author Acknowledgments

To Stacy

Tuesday, July 31

Dear Stacy,

Finally I have something interesting to tell you. No, I won’t say, I miss you sooo much. Sniff. Sniff. Or Thinking of grade nine without you makes me sick. (Even though I do and it does2)

Ginger and I were in the valley yesterday. I know you get tired of me talking about the valley, but just listen to this one. I was wearing the Kaffiyeh. (Yes, that poor-excuse-for-a-tablecloth hula-hooped around my head.) I explored until sunset, mostly on foot. When it was time to leave, Ginger was a total pig. (It’s like she knows I named her after my dead hamster and she wants to get even.) Onja’s all lined up…she’s ready to jump…okay, sidestep. Here she comes again…wait for it…now, bolt! You guessed it…I landed on my butt. Almost makes me want to ride with a saddle. Almost.

When I did get on, I rode up the winding trail and parked at Soldier Rock to wait for the stars. Big mistake. A flock of prairie chicken with wings beating like drummers flew from a patch of buck brush—right under Ginger. You know how cartoon characters run off cliffs? Ginger lunged sideways and I did the slow-motion fall. CRACK.

*&%*##%@??.** Did it ever hurt!

I was dizzy, but my eyes hooked onto this approaching shadow. I wasn’t delirious…the shadow grew eyes and a face. And long black hair.

Are you okay? he said.

I nodded and tried to get up, but my head throbbed. I touched it. Wow, major goose egg! And shoot—I’d forgotten I was wearing the Kaffiyeh.

My head was roaring.

The shadow spoke again. Let me help you. A soft voice, like grain spilling into a hopper. Shhhhhhhh.

He bent and took my hand. My teeth were chattering and his hand was so warm: I didn’t want to let go.

I stood and got a better look: long hair and eyes like perfect skipping stones. "I hit my rock on the head," I said.

He laughed. I realized I’d done it again. Long live Mrs. Malaprop! Long live farm girls in He-gyptian Ed-dresses!

And then, just like I’d imagine in a Harlequin romance (you know I’ve only read one and that was because I was trapped in a one-book cabin during a four-day rain), he took off his jean jacket and held it open for me. I slipped into it and felt instantly warm. I’m sure I blushed. Then he asked, If I help you onto your horse, do you think you can ride home?

He walked toward Ginger, who was obviously concerned about me as she ripped and tore at the grass. He made a kissing sound. My stomach flipped.

Sick, eh?

Anyway, Ginger let him catch her. He crouched and asked me to step on his back.

Weird. I think I laughed…my head was feeling a little better.

We usually do it like this, I said, my voice all crackly. I demonstrated how to make a human stirrup with my hands meshed together. He smiled—an amazing smile— like the moment the sun rests on the horizon, then leaves the world in a trance of orange, yellow and red. (How’s that for mushy…maybe writing Harlequin romances is in my future!) He wove his hands together. I stepped and he threw me. I had to grab Ginger’s neck or I’d have flown off the other side!

At the Texas gate, he was going to lead us right over the steel poles. I explained how to open the wire fence. Of course it would have been easier to get down and do it myself, but I was too busy staring at him. My arms inside his jean jacket felt tingly and achy. (Yep, I felt like a character in a Harlequin romance.) And the goose egg? Forgot it.

We didn’t talk as he led us home. It was totally unreal.

Finally, at the end of my lane, he said, Okay, see you around, and retraced his steps. I didn’t say anything, but I watched him until I couldn’t tell him from the dark blue of night.

I went straight to the house and sat down in the big ivory chair, horse pants and all. Good thing Mom and Dad were in town celebrating or she’d have kicked me out of the chair, goose egg and all.

I’m not sure how long I sat there before I heard the truck pull up. Then I remembered…I was still wearing the Kaffiyeh and this guy’s jean jacket. I ran for cover.

You must be ready to puke. I know we hate boy-crazy girls, but this is different. Isn’t it? Do you think I’m losing it? Please tell me if I’m being too strange. I wouldn’t talk like this to anyone—except you.

I really missed you at camp this year. As usual, no one could get my name right. The director read off her clipboard: ON JJJA! I went to her afterward and said, "My name is On Ya, as in ‘that shirt looks good on ya.’ She said, Okay, On—JJJJa." The cook called me Tonya at every meal. My counselor called me Sonia for the first week. Finally I told her the whole story of how Mom met the Russian Anja (with an A) in Egypt and how they became lifelong pen pals and promised to name their first daughters after one another. She said, So your name is spelled wrong, but pronounced right. I said, You’ve got it.

Camp was…okay, but most girls our age are pathetic. Really, how many hours can they stand in front of a mirror? Boring!

Speaking of boring. This summer is going to be a killer. Nothing ever happens. I’ll probably prowl around the valley a lot. Looking for trouble. Ha.

Your new friends Amber and Cayley sound like fun. Are they really into fencing? The only kind of fencing I’ve done is with barbed wire and posts. Ha.

Thanks for listening, Stace. I hope I’m not too weird.

Your best friend,

Onja

P.S. I wonder how the guy with long hair is. He’s taller than me, probably 5' 10', with a strong, thin face. I’m guessing he’s in grade ten, or maybe eleven. Wish I had a picture to show you.

P.P.S. I’ll be fifteen, two weeks from yesterday. 365 + 13 = 378 days to my license! Can’t wait to drive to Medicine Hat to see you! (Dream, dream, dream.)

Above Her Valley

The bridge, with its chalky stone double arches, was the first landmark to catch her eyes. The chestnut mare’s pace was a slowing metronome as hooves beat gravel. Onja held the leather reins taut in her right hand. Whoa, girl. They stopped on the hill above the valley. Her valley. Her eyes swept east and west, tidying the images: a flock of pelicans landing on the narrow river, a far border of cattails that grew thicker into a hay slough, a skinny poled fence with sagging barbed wire keeping everything neither in nor out.

A long black car glinted by the artesian well near the valley’s opposite wall, fins fishtailing like exhaust. Must be someone from the other side, Onja thought.

Ginger stamped her front hoof and shook. Like a drenched dog, Onja observed. She grabbed the coarse copper mane and managed to keep her balance. Easy, girl, she said, placing her hand on the mare’s glistening shoulder. The energy of twitching muscle, surging blood and beating sun jolted through her arm to her heart. She’d been ten when her father had brought home the three-year-old filly. Onja had overheard her mother: Wayne, that prancing Arab is too much horse for her. Her dad had answered, The mare’s only half Arabian, and Onja has a good seat. She can handle it.

Onja clenched her teeth. How did he know I had a good seat? she thought. The only horse advice he’d given was after watching me fall off my Shetland pony.

He’d yelled, Why don’t you roll?

Wish I’d yelled back, Because I don’t practice falling off.

Instead, I just lay there in the dirt, trying to catch my wind.

The early days graduating to Ginger had been tense: one bare foot stepped on, two out-of-control gallops, three refusals to be caught…but in the last four years they’d worked out the kinks in the partnership. And Onja had learned to read equine signals. Ears back: fear. Ears forward: curiosity. Head bunting: impatience. Foot stomping: more impatience.

The sun blinked. Shade…we need shade, Onja said, nudging the horse and snapping softly with her tongue.

Her eyes fixed on the mountainous erratic beside the bridge. Onja’s mother had explained that the word erratic came from the Latin word erraticus meaning wandering. Onja thought of these boulders, like Soldier Rock, at the other border of her valley, abandoned on the prairie like baby mammoths by the retreating ice. A lick of breeze teased through her hair. She relaxed into the downward gait. The shade of the bridge grew with each grind of Ginger’s hooves.

The erratic below, with its smooth top and spool-like sides, was separated from the riverbed by a wide ring of pulverized earth. She imagined an ancient buffalo herd— before roads, fences and the bridge—with no shade for miles, mingling, darkening the valley under a pulsating sun. She could see them clustered around the erratic, each bunting their way to the inner circle to scratch their thick hides on the rubbing stone.

A flash of black disappeared, drawing Onja’s eyes to the smooth and sloping coulees on the other side, a crazy quilt of sun-washed dun, gold and sage tossed onto a hastily made bed.

Onja yawned and stretched her sleeping spine. The first day of August, she thought, and exactly one month since Stacy’d left for Medicine Hat. What’s Alberta got that Saskatchewan doesn’t? Maybe more oil and coal and cows, but I’d be so homesick if I was Stacy—even two weeks of camp was too much for me—yet Stacy seems to be having the time of her life.

A killdeer screeched its name twice. A distant cow bellowed in the community pasture and was soon answered by her kind. The calls drifted into Onja’s inner soundscape like twilight coyotes singing of wolf cousins or flatland trains dreaming of mountains. Audible and unnoticed.

Muktuk barked and gave a zigzag chase after a blur of brown on the other side of the river.

Muuuck Tuuuck. Onja elongated the vowels like a chant, her voice dry and empty against the two miles of valley floor. She listened to the silence left by her call. Muktuk, she thought. I wonder if those words have ever, in the history of humankind, been shouted in this valley. Muktuk, she whispered, tasting the heat.

Then: an almost human scream. Onja shuddered. Crap, she thought, he got it. The black Lab trotted from the ditch just across the bridge with a limp rabbit dangling from his mouth. Why can’t he just eat dog food?

I hate senseless death, she thought. Like when Dad brings home deer, necks limp, tongues hanging out. Or prairie chicken, cold like feather pillows. Even when they butchered chicken, Onja hid in the house and then refused to eat anything they’d processed themselves. They had names, she thought. How could I eat Freckles?

The dog reached the double arching bridge and turned west into the riverbed when Onja was halfway down the hill. He’d joined the family eight years ago, bringing his own name, which meant whale blubber in Inuit, and a ring of white hair around his neck. Her dad had said the six-month-old puppy had rarely been let off his rope. Maybe we should have called him Hunter, or Gunner, like Grandpa Tom’s old Lab, Onja thought.

Her eyes followed him along the narrow, meandering river until he disappeared behind a coulee wall where the fence led to the river and