The Canadian Civil War: Volume 3 - West to the Wall

by William Wresch

Chapter 9

  DeSmet

  I didn’t see the ancient hotelier in the morning, and I certainly didn’t try for breakfast. I loaded the car and headed west over the bridge into Dakota. It is easily the largest province in Canada, extending from the red river in the east to the mountains in the west, and from the Platte river in the south to the Arctic Circle in the north. It was huge, and as far as I could see, empty.

  The first thing to catch my attention as I crossed the bridge, was the sign – “Dakota.” Not “Welcome to Dakota,” or “Dakota – Vacation wonderland,” or the usual Chamber of Commerce silliness. It was just “Dakota.” Underneath was the message – “Safety first – buffalo and snow mobiles have the right of way.” So, as I am driving down a four lane national highway doing 100 or 120 kilometers per hour, I should stop if I see a buffalo or a snowmobile? Really? They couldn’t afford fences along the roadside?

  At least it gave me something to look for. There was certainly nothing else here. The land was flat, covered with snow, and seemed to go on forever. I drove for hours without seeing a house, or a tree, or even a snow drift. With nothing to see outside the car, I found myself spending more and more time studying my gauges. Did I have enough gas to make DeSmet? Was the temperature gauge beginning to rise? Did I see the oil light flicker for just an instant? On rare occasions I passed another car or had a car pass me. I felt like waving to each one, or stopping to chat. There were other humans! Then my car would be by itself again and I was surrounded by the empty. DeSmet was only about a five hour drive, but I don’t remember any drive seeming to take so long.

  The gas gauge was nearly on E, and my stomach was giving me a serious list of complaints about missing dinner, breakfast, and lunch, when I started to see shapes on the horizon. I saw them so far off, it was another fifteen minutes before I got close enough to see it was a town – complete with buildings and maybe even some people. I had made it to DeSmet.

  How do I describe the town? It extended along the north side of the highway and appeared to be an exact square – ten block by ten blocks. I looked for a river or some other national feature that would have attracted the initial settlement, but I saw nothing. It was as if the whole thing was just plunked down randomly at this point along the highway. Maybe a wagon had broken down here, or a tree had once grown at this location. Maybe some guy fell off his horse and decided to found a town here. In any case, the town was here – what there was of it.

  There was a main street that ran up the middle of the town. It featured business and civic buildings, all two or three stories high, and all constructed of gray brick as if any other color would look silly surrounded by so much white. Fanning out east and west of the main drag were residences, also mostly of brick. They tended to be one story tall, and if there was a difference between the east side and west side, I couldn’t see it. Of course my primary interest upon arrival was finding gas for my car. Fortunately, there was a station just off the highway at the foot of Main Street.

  With a full tank of gas, my next goal was food and shelter. Do you recall in high school a science problem where you had to determine where the French temperature – Celsius – meets the English temperature – Fahrenheit? The answer is forty below. What the science teacher did not tell you is what forty below feels like when the wind is shrieking across miles of snow. I can tell you what it feels like – it feels like the wind wants to tear your face off. That’s the world I drove through as I cruised Main Street (actually DeSmet Avenue) looking for a place that would feed me and give me a place to spend the night.

  It turns out the town has a grand total of one hotel, so my selection process was simplified greatly. I picked the one and only hotel – three stories and a sign advertising a restaurant. It also looked sturdy enough to not blow over in this wind.

  Leaving my car at the curb (there was plenty of room. It looked like there were maybe three cars spread over the nearest four blocks), I let the wind blow me in the front doors of the hotel. What I found was a modest-sized lobby with some effort at decorating. Buffalo hides hung from the walls, alternating with blankets appearing to be Indian design. A huge chandelier made of antlers hung from the ceiling. All this was nice, but what I appreciated more was reasonable warmth and the presence of a person behind the registration desk and several people eating in the lobby restaurant. I had found food – and people!

  I registered first – yes, there were rooms available, how many nights did I want to stay? This turned out to be a tougher question than I had expected. My initial plan had been to come here for two or three weeks, meet some people, use the local library, and do a quick study of the region and its history. I was far less sure of that decision now. Frankly, I already wanted to leave. What had I been thinking even coming here in January? With a full tank of gas and a full stomach, it was tempting to go back to Green Bay in the morning. After taking longer to answer than the clerk expected, I finally asked for two nights. I figured if nothing else, I could tough it out that long.

  What about lunch? I was a bit of a pig. Without even seeing my new room, I headed straight for the lobby restaurant and took a table. The waiter was young, helpful, and recommended the daily special – a double buffalo burger. I jumped at the chance to eat ground up buffalo, hoping it would be easier to chew than yesterday’s steak had been. As it turned out, it didn’t have much taste, but I could at least chew it. Halfway through the burger I began to relax. I was inside, warm, and fed. Little did I know.

  It was mid-afternoon and the sun was charging toward the horizon when I went out to the car to get my bag and move the car around to the hotel parking lot. The bag I got. The car was a different matter. My brand new battery managed to turn the engine twice before it gave up. The car wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was I. Back in the lobby I explained the problem to the clerk, who said he would call a shop. I left him my keys and went up to my room.

  There was nothing special about the room. The carpet had a few stains, the woodwork had been painted several times, the bed was soft and the tv small, but at least the room was relatively warm. The one interesting touch was the paintings on the walls. They looked like original water colors, and they were pretty good prairie landscapes, not the usual hotel fare. They brought some needed color to the room. Outside, the windows showed me white streets fading to gray as the sun set at 4 pm. My third floor room let me see all the way to the edge of town, which is to say five blocks before the small brick houses stopped and the endless white plains began. I closed the curtains.

  Elise had given me contact information for several people in the provincial government, and I called one – a lady working in the records office – to set up a meeting for the next morning. I was hoping she might give me some general background information on early explorers and local Indian tribes, and let me peek into whatever archives had been retained locally. What I got instead was a lady who didn’t want to get off the phone. The minute I introduced myself, she said Elise had explained I would be coming and she was so glad I would be in town for several days and so glad to share the historical records with a history professor and so glad I had made the journey and so glad I had not had trouble on the road and so glad… Well, you get the idea. She was glad to talk to me.

  Half an hour later, with my ears warm from holding to phone first to one ear and then to the other, she told me her co-workers would love to meet me too, could I come over for dinner around 8? Hoping for something other than buffalo meat, I agreed and got directions to her house. It appeared to be about four blocks from my hotel, a distance I figured I could walk.

  Until it was time to leave for dinner, I left a message for Elise telling her I had arrived, I checked my emails, and I channel surfed on the tiny room tv. It turned out they carried the four main national networks, plus a provincial channel that was all local content, mostly using the Sioux language. I kept the set to that channel and saw local dances, a show in
buffalo skin tanning, a long description of some guy’s elk hunt, and even a weather report done in Sioux. I didn’t understand a word the weatherman said, but I didn’t need to – the graphics made it clear the weather would consist of cold alternating with snow. No big surprise.

  I got so interested in the local channel, I left a bit later than I had expected to, and just threw on a coat and a hat. Big mistake. Walking even four blocks in DeSmet requires proper preparation. By the time I arrived at her house, I was practically running just to keep from freezing. That was also a mistake, since my lungs refused to inhale the air at this temperature. So I was running and coughing and hugging myself, hoping I had the address right, since one more block and I assumed I would just die on the sidewalk.

  Fortunately, I did have the right house – a two-story brick house pretty undistinguishable from its neighbors, none of which would elicit any admiration in Green Bay. The best you could say is they seemed solid. The worst you could say is they were plain – even barren. You would think maybe a painted shutter or a bay window would break the expanse of gray brick. Nope.

  I practically pushed my way in the front door, waiting maybe a microsecond once the door was open and I had a way out of the cold. I was so cold and so rushed to get inside, I was a bit disoriented. I stood and stamped my feet and blew my nose and only gradually realized I was the focus of at least a dozen people who had apparently been waiting anxiously for me to arrive. I heard a mixed chorus of “Are you ok?” and “Glad you could make it” and “Welcome” and “Please come in,” all jumbled together. What I took from the cacophony was best wishes and real concern. Meanwhile, I hoped I wasn’t embarrassing myself too badly as I blew my nose yet again, tried to straighten out my hair as I removed my hat, and struggled with gloves over very frozen fingers. Basically I was a mess, and I had somehow walked to center stage.

  Luckily, a few minutes after I arrived and had achieved some measure of control over my appendages, the hostess introduced herself and took some charge over the chaos.

  “Professor Murphy, we are so pleased you are here.” And she did look pleased. I would put her somewhere in the mid-forties, about average height, the usual Canadian dark hair. If anything stood out, it was her clothing. She seemed pretty overdressed for a week night out in the plains, but she was clearly enjoying herself and her role as hostess. She gave me a moment to gather myself and then led me around the room introducing me to each person there. These folks also seemed to have exceptional smiles, like this was a special evening. I have a pretty large ego, so I could say they were pleased to have me there, given my connections to the university or to Elise or to the Jolliet family or to the New Orleans adventure that was pretty well known, but later I wondered if they were happy just to have a fresh face to see.

  At the time, I just shook lots of hands, tried to say something sensible at each greeting (although I have to say I felt light headed from the cold, so I am not sure how much sense I made), and returned smiles once my face unfroze.

  What can I say about the house? It seemed like a weak echo of a Green Bay home. It had the lacquered doors and white paneling, even a chandelier in the dining room. But somehow it all seemed off. The doors seemed too small to be so dressed up, and the ceiling was too low for a chandelier. The thing hung about eye level and threatened to give me a headache in no time. It all seemed wrong, and certainly out of keeping with the exterior of the house. It was like the exterior and interior were in conflict, and both were losing.

  Meanwhile there was lots of conversation, all of it seemingly random. How was the trip? What’s new in Green Bay? How do you like DeSmet? Topics were all over the place and never seemed to get to any depth. Finally we were seated to dinner and things settled out a bit. I was happy to see fresh rolls and several can-loads of vegetables and overjoyed when the meat served was some kind of fowl, not yet more buffalo.

  It soon emerged that I was to “sing” for my supper, with the hostess tossing me opening lines that I was to expand upon. “Tell us about the boat fire off Biloxi.” “I understand you were at the National Cathedral for that Christmas Eve service.” ‘Why did the Huguenot wagon train stop before New Orleans?” I managed to eat a bit, but I spent most of the next two hours talking about those and other current topics. And I was riveting. Really. I have never had a dozen people listen so intently. I am far more used to dinner at the Murphy house where I got a maximum of two sentences out before one of the brothers interrupted or one of the sisters rolled her eyes at my inanity. Whoever pays attention to the baby brother? These folks did. In DeSmet I was a rock star.

  Finally after two hours they served the brandy, and folks started making their excuses to get back home. It was a work day tomorrow, the kids needed final checking before bed, etc. They gradually drifted off, but not before each and every one of them shook my hand and assured me how grateful they were I had come to visit and how much they would like to entertain me another evening at their home. And it looked like they meant it.

  I was the last to leave. The hostess held me as long as she could, making me promise to come back another evening, and assuring me she would be happy to work with me in the morning. Finally she turned me over to her husband who would drive me back the hotel.

  We went out the back door to his garage where I discovered his car was plugged into an engine heater. That appeared to be the secret. His Peugot started right up. He hadn’t said much at the dinner table, and he didn’t say much as we rolled through the darkened streets to the hotel. As he rolled the car to the front door he finally had his say.

  “Have you been around expats before?”

  “Expats?”

  “Expatriates – people who are living in a foreign land.

  “Those people at dinner were foreigners?”

  “They are foreign to Dakota. Some come for the money, some come for the adventure. But the foreignness gets old after a while and they tend to cling together to recreate a small version of their homeland. That’s what you saw tonight.”

  “They seemed nice.”

  “They are nice. But they are trapped in a foreign land.

  “And you?”

  “Born and raised in a village north of here. Went off to college and met Nicole. Brought her back here. Mostly it works. Some times better than others.” I had absolutely no idea what to say in response, so I gathered myself to get out of the car.

  “Thank you for the ride here, and for the insight. It helps.” And it did.