When Alice Lay Down With Peter Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Pardon my intrusion upon your spiritual exercise,” he said to her. My mother smiled. “If a horse you would find,” he said, “a messenger I need.”
    He sent her ten miles north, to Kildonan. She was to spy on the militant party of Canadian annexationists who were holedup at the old stone fort there. It was said they’d taken a prisoner. She hooked her capote over the saddle horn to hide the fact that she rode sidesaddle, hoping to delay my birth. We were cantering over the frozen river, a foolhardy act but exhilarating for both of us. The horse voiced its breath, lungs drumming, and its body warmed her legs, reminding her of how desperately she needed to be touched, and she hid her face from the wind, so she didn’t see the rider overtaking her from the east or the frantic man running towards us. He spread-eagled across the packed drifts and steadied his rifle with his elbows and fired, vaguely in our direction. Our horse went down, starboard side to, but my mother skipped off unhurt and made a beeline for our assailant. She assumed our horse had been shot. She didn’t look behind her, or she would have seen the other rider lying bleeding in the snow. She ran towards the rifle; she wanted to warn the man, his bright red Assomption sash indicating that he was one of us, that the Canadians were after him. But the fellow panicked. He figured my mum was one of his captors come to carry him back to jail, and he closed his eyes and fired again. Mum was close enough to see his terrified face. It was poor Parisien, the slow-witted woodcutter. Just as she reached him, there came a flurry of horses carrying ragged, underdressed Canadians. Parisien wept and begged in French for mercy, but they chased him and swung from their horses with great oak clubs like primitive polo mallets, sporty and larking.
    Mum stumbled underfoot, and when one of the Canadians jumped down, she grabbed his arm, beseeching him to show mercy, but the fellow (a tall young man withskim-milk skin and a peevish, twisted face) shook my mother off with such strength that she flew back and struck her head against Parisien’s rifle. When she became aware of the warm blood between her legs, it produced her first spasm of maternal vigilance. She lay where she fell, afraid to move, horrified by what she witnessed.
    “You goddamn son of a bitch,” the skinny man wheezed through his nose and upper palate, the words steamed upwards by the heat of his rage. He staggered on the thin soles of leather riding boots like he’d just stepped out of a saloon, wearing a light jacket, and in bare hands whitened with frostbite, he gripped an axe. The back of Parisien’s head was flattened by oversleeping and a cowlick sprung up at the top. “You goddamn half-breed fool. You ugly son of a bitch. You depraved idiot, you half-breed Indian Catholic bitch dog. You Pap, you Papist pap pap pop popery.” He slowed to take aim. Simple Parisien sat up, licked his finger and tried to calm his cowlick. The skinny Orangeman smirked and swung, and a broad gash opened the skull of Norbert Parisien. “Gotcha, you son of a bitch half-breed!”
    Parisien sat still, his eyes drawn upwards, as if to look at the back of his own skull, and his face was transported, tranquil. His assailant stopped for a split second, the freezing air abruptly full of fear. Then, as if to overcome his own fright, the fellow yanked the red Assomption sash from Parisien’s waist, tied it to the pommel, fastened the other end about Parisien’s neck and, jumping into the saddle, kicked his horse into a trot, dragging the limp bundle over the snow. The sash and the blood from the wound left a watery red stain on the ice. The horse stumbled,confused by the uneven weight it pulled, and my mother lay back and looked up at the blank white sky, feeling the urgency of my coming between her legs, thinking of our mutual blood, how it would melt with spring and confirm for the river its English name.

CHAPTER FIVE
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