the museum, keeping the facts to herself and her burning interest in the past of her husband’s race a jealously-guarded secret.
The beautiful carved bone amulet Sam wore round his neck, a very ancient Assiniboine charm, gave Katie her only tiny glimmer of hope that one day he would face up to his roots. She knew it had been his father’s, the male half of the dead parents Sam never spoke of, and the nature of her job told her it was valuable beyond its role of sentimental keepsake. But he offered her no explanation, no anecdotal family history, and he took it off only once, when he was forced to replace its leather thong after snapping it while swimming in the creek.
What kept her from prying too deeply were two things. First, she thought the ivory-coloured circle of bone hanging on the tight brown skin of his hairless chest was the sexiest thing she had ever seen; and secondly, she loved him so much that anything that made hurt flit across his broad innocent face made her die inside. So the history of Sam’s amulet was safe. Sam would never know she had located its origin in more than one book. She knew lots about that charm. One day she would talk to him about it, but not now.
Katie walked clockwise round the cases, completing her little ritual. She wandered past the display of beaded cradle-boards, noting that the model baby, strapped into the most ornate example was starting to go yellow on one side of its face. Dummies were a pain. They never looked real, and when they did there was something frightening about them. This mangled thing wasn’t going to fool anyone, but Katie had insisted on the baby, just to educate the public about the human side of her objects. It wasn’t enough to show visitors the old crumbling piece of wood and beading and make them admire the handiwork. You had to make them stop and think. Think about what life was like. Think about how their life was much the same as our life. Even make twentieth-century Mr and Mrs Leisure Suit consider that although things were harder for the average eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Kinchuinick Indian, in some ways it was better then than now. She looked at the flaky yellowing face of the plaster baby. The real thing would have been strapped into one of these cradleboards from the moment it was born and taken out occasionally to stretch and kick and be cuddled, then strapped back in and attached to its mother. Secure. Loved. Cherished. Forest moss for a diaper, with the plant’s chemicals providing a natural barrier to diaper rash and a whole tribe providing love, attention and security. Pretty different from the Kinchuinick babies now. Nothing about their modern lives would sit happily in a mahogany case. The plaster baby looked back at her as if it mourned for them too. Needs a clean, she thought. Get rid of that yellowing with some turpentine. It went on her mental list.
Then on to the medicine bundles. Strange, small leather pouches full of herbs, used by shamans for good and bad medicine. All present and correct, except maybe one of the bad medicine bundles was responsible for a label peeling off at the back of the case. Bad medicine plays havoc with glue. Note two on the list. A stroll past the eagle feather wands and pipes completed her circuit, and ended, as always, with the model.
Just before closing, before she turned the model off at the wall switch, she always pressed the Corkscrew Tunnel’s red button and smiled as the tiny train started its last journey of the day through the mountain of paper: her own ritual.
Ritual was important to Katie Hunt. Perhaps not quite as important as it had been to Katie Crosby, but it was still up there along with breathing and eating. But if that love of ritual had endured the years, lots of things had disappeared forever; and they started to disappear when the twenty-three-year-old Katie Jane Crosby had first gazed into the delicious, mischievous black eyes of Sam Hunting Wolf. Mostly bad things. Things she was glad to have shaken off like dandruff. Things like Tom.
That had been close. Whenever Katie thought back about how close, she shuddered.
Was it really her who thought a Friday night barbecue at Tom’s sailing club was the height of sophistication? Yes it was. And it was Katie Crosby who used to practise signing Mrs Tom Clark on the telephone pad when she was doodling during a long call. A real close thing. She recalled her parents’ faces that night. Expressions of almost catatonic shock, the night she let them all down. But also the night she set herself free.
It was her own fault. She should never have let Tom own her the way he did. But the things you know as a woman are different from the things you believe as a girl. He bullied her. She knew that now. Then, of course, she thought he loved her, was telling her things for her own good. Christ, she’d lied to herself all those years. Lied when she saw a line for a blockbuster movie she ached to see, when she and Tom were heading for the art-house theatre to sit through a long dark European film with subtitles. Lied to herself when Tom told her that her college friends were young and silly and he couldn’t tolerate them, that his boat-owning friends were more interesting. Lied about liking to push weights, ride expensive mountain bikes and go roller-blading with the big muscle-bound dumb geeks Tom admired. She ate low cholesterol food to please him, and agreed with Tom that bed by ten-thirty was a good thing to help with a personal training programme.
A whole series of lies and self-deceit. It had left her awash and confused, wondering who the hell Katie Crosby was. Did she like Sylvester Stallone or Ingmar Bergman? Would she rather go to the private view of an exhibition of Corbusier drawings, or go and fly a power kite in a storm? Why did she long to skip ‘training’, sit up until 4 a.m. drinking beer and arguing with friends whether Kojak would look like Barbra Streisand if he grew hair? Her confusion had made her pretend she was full of certainty, boasting to her friends that she was settled and sure of life, that she had the answers. She was grown now and the answer was, she could like anything she wanted. No reasons necessary. But then, the answer had to be Tom’s way. It wasn’t his fault. It had been hers. She didn’t think she was at all pretty, and no one changed her mind. In fact everyone remarked on how handsome Tom Clark was. She was ‘lucky’ to have snagged him. He said he loved her because she was funny and bright and full of life, but in private moments, in subtle ways, he made it clear that one of them could have anyone they wanted, and the other one should be damned grateful.
He treated her degree in archaeology and anthropology as a curious and charming little hobby. It was his yacht chandlery yard that would keep them solvent, and she needn’t worry about a thing.
But she had loved him. Slim, tall, handsome Tom. Tom who bought endless magazines about boats, who wanted to be thought an expert on books, architecture, design and civilized living, but really only knew about his resting pulse rate. Tom who was like a child, as a direct result of trying so hard to be a man. And she very nearly married him. Warning bells had been sounding long before she met Sam, but she hadn’t listened to them. Sex with Tom had started to be so infrequent and awkward she dreaded him even trying. His clumsiness made him treat it like a chore, and every bungled attempt left them beached further apart on some strange shore. It was, after all, her fault. He told her so, often.
‘You never initiate making love.’
She hated that term, ‘making love’. Sounded like a school’s sex education lecture. It took the lust, the dirt, the fun out of it.
‘That’s the problem,’ he would say. ‘You have to start it sometimes.’
But for some reason she didn’t want to start it. She wanted him to want her more, to grab her like a plumber in a dirty movie and make her ache for him. But that was never going to happen. Remember, Tom could have anyone he wanted. She was ‘lucky’.
And all the time her parents welcomed him like he was the son they never had, never once noticing their happy-go-lucky only child growing increasingly more insecure, miserable and bitter.
Then there was Sam. The first time Sam had really made her laugh, she thought a flood-gate had opened somewhere inside her. A joy so profound and delicious burst from her that she felt intoxicated. It was almost as if she’d forgotten how to laugh like that. Crying with mirth, sides aching from elation. With the laughter, always a stirring of sexual passion that made her lightheaded.
And to think she nearly didn’t join her parents in Silver that year. Tom had asked her to forgo the yearly family vacation in Alberta and stay in Vancouver as his partner at some charity ball, and she had nearly said yes. Her parents didn’t expect her to come with them any more. She was a grown woman after all. The ball was tempting. Tom’s